Editorial Its Time for Colonial Williamsburg to Get Serious Again
Later Here on this Ridge was finished in 1997 I felt that it was time to move right on to some other destination-themed album, and the obvious option was our own local destination, Virginia's 'Historic Triangle:' Williamsburg, Jamestown, and Yorktown.
I started list pieces I'd composed or arranged, and at that place were already enough for a full album. Phil Skeens was between jobs, so I asked him to be actively preparing for guitar and drum parts on eight of the tracks. Since Henry Smith at present had his own digital studio, I decided to engage him for the unabridged recording projection this time. No more self-applied science for at present!
The topics would be limited but still quite wide: Historic early on American music from English, Scottish, and Irish sources washed in our own way; original compositions almost nature and the interplays of cultures; both Bizarre and folk; instrumentation carefully chosen to represent the ideas and era; both ancient and mod musical approaches.
I had an idea for Joe Healey to use his African banjar with my kalimba to refer to that part of the American heritage. We did a live improvisational take at Outback Studio.
For authentic Bizarre I wanted to include the pop Handel Passacaille from Harpsichord Suite no. vii; Tom Marshall graciously agreed to have us record him playing it on his own French replica keyboard, then I brought in Henry with his equipment to capture the marvelous sound. I asked Tom if it would be okay with him if I did an improvisational version of the Passacaille later in the album, and he came back with 'Why don't you let me insert a series of chords in the middle, and yous can improvise in that location --- it's the Baroque way!' So we did, and I also drew on motifs from Biber's and Bach's famous Passacaglias as office of that improv's fabric.
Speaking of Biber's Passacaglia, I asked Annie Loud of Colonial Williamsburg if she had a solo violin piece nosotros could record, and she named that item one. We really wanted to get great early American acoustics in the ambience of the sound, so we arranged with the historic Colonial Westover Church building in Charles City Canton to do it there. Again, Henry brought his remote studio to go a marvelous sound. Annie's passionate and historically informed violin playing was wondrous!
A number of the musicians involved were alumni of the College of William & Mary in Virginia, founded here in 1693, and so certainly we had to incorporate that chemical element, including a version of the William & Mary Hymn.
And then we'd had begun recording at Henry'due south studio!
And then I was asked to play music at the funeral of a friend from church, Lincoln Rice, and one of those amazing things happened: In the receiving line for Lincoln's widow Ashley, I was standing next to the Williamsburg City Manager, Jack Tuttle, who asked me what I was currently working on, and I allow him know the new projection was about our area. He said, 'Oh, for the 300thursday Anniversary of Williamsburg?' And I realized I'd not even thought of that! He said, 'Let's set up a coming together with the 300th Anniversary Commission!'
So I met with Jack and the Commission's Manager, Martha Hamilton-Phillips, to lay out a style to include the CD in the overall program of the celebration, and the championship became Celebration of Centuries.
So far in this series of blogs I've mentioned aught of the graphic art of the projects. For Incarnation I'd chosen a slide I'd taken of a fir tree, with an heirloom German Exakta camera, in Rocky Mountain National Park, and I simply sent that to the CD manufacturer with instructions about how to lay out the fine art and text, and information technology had worked well enough. For Wayfaring Stranger I'd done the aforementioned in the showtime edition with a photograph I'd taken with the same camera at Yosemite National Park, plus my brother Alan's fine calligraphy of the title. Then for Hither on this Ridge I'd hired a professional graphic artist who had worked on many commercial projects for the National Parks, Kim Furry, to lay out the graphics in a way that would appeal to visitors of the Park, and it worked nifty!
So for the electric current project I decided to ask Kim to do this again, but she couldn't, and then she recommended a colleague named Andy who chosen his business concern Company A, and he carried out the task with swell expertise. The graphics had a marvelously professional design! I wanted a cover photo that represented Williamsburg just wasn't the typical Colonial Williamsburg scene, and we plant a great photograph of the due east stop of Bruton Parish Church building by photographer Ellen Grand. Rudolph. The church building'southward vicar gave gracious permission for the image'south use.
Liner notes --- the credits and comments and advisory material of many kinds --- take e'er been of much involvement to me: I love to read all the text notes in every recording I buy or borrow! I have an English caste from the College of William & Mary and taught English language for many years, so naturally I make a serious effort in my original projects to flesh out meaningful and pertinent textual content. For Celebration of Centuries I filled three internal panels with carefully crafted notes. Everything in my albums has meaning that counts, so I hope you read these liner notes that I put through well-nigh 10 revisions before each album goes to printing! (If you have downloaded versions of my albums, yous can get to the discography pages in my website and go the pdfs of the fine art layouts.)
I might add together every bit well that, starting with Hither on this Ridge, I occasionally included nature sounds. On the Shenandoah National Park project I had contacted the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries to see what sounds they may have available for use in such a recording --- after I'd been rudely refused past the Solitudes company, who viewed me as a hostile competitor ---but zero easily worked at Game & Inland Fisheries (though Lee Walker was very gracious and helpful), so I decided that in this case 'necessity was the mother of invention,' and I made the sound of a rushing stream past recording my fingers swishing in a sink of water over and over, blended across the stereo spectrum, and I imitated bird songs with a Generation pennywhistle in high G. These techniques worked amazingly well! On Celebration of Centuries I used some of the same techniques, including an Audubon bird imitator 'chipping' device. Exercise you lot recognize any species? Wood Thrush, Cardinal, White-Throated Sparrow, Oriole, Tufted Titmouse? No one has ever questioned the authenticity of the occasional nature sounds!
I equanimous several pieces for this projection. The anthology opens with 'James and York Bluffs,' an intentional impression of the coming together of two cultures. A Native American is sitting on a barefaced playing his flute (equally I had at York River Land Park when I came upwardly with the original tune idea), and he spies a European ship coming up the river, to begin an interface of peoples that would alter history. The tune has an epic, wandering nature. Later in the anthology is 'The Groovy Road' about the showtime highway in America built by Governor Berkeley from his Light-green Springs Plantation to Jamestown, and vestiges of which tin still be plant in the forest. I'd composed this tune in 1994, on the twenty-four hour period my dad died. 'Spartina' speaks of the tall marsh grasses that make full the tidal flats of our estuaries, and its melody grows out of a variation of my National Parks theme 'Preservation.' (You'll find those motifs interwoven elsewhere every bit parts of the various tracks' arrangements.)
Many other tracks hold vivid memories for me: Phil and I recorded a medley live in which he intriguingly thumped the Irish bodhran pulsate while I played bamboo flute: 'The World Turned Upside Downwards,' the tune played at the Yorktown surrender, then a couple of carefully chosen favorite tunes of the Revolutionary soldiers. An overdubbed counterpoint department near the end interweaves several American tunes in an artistic tangle.
Phil and I did our duet of 'Bulldoze the Common cold Wintertime Away' and 'Greensleeves,' two great period pieces, and the bowed psaltery got its chance to be a atomic number 82 instrument. Our duet of 'The Lass of Gowrie' lent a lyrical, cheerful tone; 'Child Grove' explored a contemplative, mystical mood for a modify; 'Volition Ye No Come Back Again,' 'Flowers of Edinburgh/Rose Tree/French Schottische' brought Phil'southward finest guitar talents to the fore in combination with my flutes and dulcimers across the room.
My wife Ro (vocalizing) and the Scottish fiddler John Turner joined with Henry and me on another epic medley that transformed itself back and forth between an early on American folk hymn 'Jefferson' and one of our old favorite English tunes, 'Lovely Joan.' I got the bass flute dorsum out for i of the leads, and I played the shape-annotation harmonies on first whistles, and so later bamboo flutes. The concepts of these arrangements continued to develop their own worlds!
For an substantially solo rails on my hammered dulcimer I played my ain approach to ii tunes past the great 18thursday Century Irish harper Turlough O'Carolan, poised on either side of a transcription I'd washed of Bach's Praeludium I of The Well-Tempered Clavier --- one of my most personally satisfying operation pieces to this day.
For a kind of comic relief I did a zany dulcimer solo of 'Soldier's Joy' that hardly resembles the usual folk melody, and Henry masterfully enhanced information technology with horse 'clops' and other percussion. Henry's bass and keyboards, by the way, were a great add-on in a number of places in the arrangement of the album.
Paulette Murphy was back with her keyboard arranging and orchestration for a fantasia on Pachelbel's Canon in D, incorporating three new melodic overlapping voices I'd composed called 'Canon for 3 Centuries.' I had the opportunity to freely improvise on my flute in the finale of this i, which turned out to be the anthology'south finale as well.
Certainly this project was not a mere collection of historic tunes --- information technology was a full-diddled adventure, with a groovy array of colorful journeys, of which we remain proud. A lamentable point, though, is that the anthology got too long for its ain skillful, and, equally we've done on a number of recordings, we had to remove a notable piece: Annie'southward Passacaglia. It still hasn't found its way onto an album, but I promise information technology will soon!
When the release fourth dimension came, we had a few technical crises, such as faulty copies, and an water ice storm stopping delivery trucks, but the Tricentennial Committee sponsored a concert past Phil and me at the wonderful Williamsburg Regional Library Theatre, and on the exact anniversary of the metropolis'south founding I played a part in a gala outdoor concert --- such an laurels!
Since that fourth dimension Colonial Williamsburg and other destinations have carried the CD in their shops, and a number of concert programs in such places as the Hennage Auditorium in the Fine art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg have featured selections and topics from the album. As of 2014 nosotros've made nine,000 copies of the tapes and CDs!
But, as with all my themed albums, it'due south intended to be worth listening to for its own value as an artistic work without witting idea of the theme. Even today!
Source: https://timothyseaman.com/en/timothys-blog/entry/the-making-of-the-album-celebration-of-centuries
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