It was Christmas and Kinlocochbervie had a festive atmosphere about it. Decorations and fir trees decked out with tinsel stood in windows, lighting the dull afternoon with flashes of cheerful Technicolor brilliance, and the door to the Compass was adorned with a massive wreath. The smell of burning wood was in the air, as the wind tugged at the ribbons of smoke issuing from most of the chimneys. I walked past the Compass, and my nose was assaulted by the wonderful odor of roasting chestnuts, something I had not smelled in years. It conjured many images of Christmases past, and as I walked to the first of the shops on my list, I was whistling a merry carol. — Richard Brennan in Paul Brandon’s Swim the Moon
Let me turn down Hambo in the Barn , the excellent recording by Andrea Hoag and friends, that I’ve been listening to on this, the last morning of Fall as counted on the calendar. But really we’re into Winter proper as the weather goes on this Scottish Estate, and that means it’s time for the annual Greening.
The Winter Solstice arrives tomorrow, so let’s start you off with our annual story about that sacred event, Jennifer Stevenson’s ‘Solstice’ about a small-time rocker — well, listen to it as told by the author to find out what happens to her on that night, or if you prefer to read it, you can do so here.
One of our Winter Queens, the late Josepha Sherman, ponders in Her Speech upon the meaning of Winter: ‘What is Winter? A time to fear? A time for darkness and death? No. Winter is merely part of the endless cycle of sleep and awakening, dying and rebirth. The trees know it: they don’t die each year.’
Let us not forget about two other stellar works about this turning of the year, Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising, a series that would make a most excellent Winter reading endeavour, and a shorter work, Jane Yolen’s The Wild Hunt.
One of our longtime staff, Kathleen, has an online journal where she talks about her late sister Kage Baker, author of the acclaimed SF series The Company. Her latest entry which you can read here has her reminiscing about Kage during the Christmas season.
Cat loved an offbeat Christmas film: ‘I don’t do movie theatres for various reasons, including audiences that chatter too much and the smell of that weird stuff that’s not really butter. And so it is that I’m watching an animated film released several Christmas seasons past called Rise of The Guardians which features a Russian Father Christmas, an Australian Easter Bunny (complete with boomerang), The Sandman, and a really cute (in a fey way) female Tooth Fairy. All Guardians of the hopes, wishes and dreams of children everywhere.’
I’ve been looking for an article I remember being in The Sleeping Hedgehog on eggnog on how it came to be a tradition here maybe forty years back but I can’t find it. What I do have is Jennifer Stevenson’s recipe for eggnog for Stay Home Egg Nog Fluff as she calls it so you can try it out in your drink making.
And it won’t surprise you that everyone has food traditions. Our Editor asked a number of folks about what Winter Holiday food and drink traditions they had. By the way Ellen Kushner, a Winter Queen for us a few years back, answered concisely with ‘latkes and candle-lighting’.
Kathleen looks at a work by another well-regarded composer: ‘Indeed Claude Debussy is one of my favorite composers, but I hadn’t heard ‘“Noel des Enfants Qui N’ont Plus De Maisons” (“Christmas Carol for Homeless Children”)’ until recently. It’s on soprano Carmen Balthrop’s lovely CD The Art of Christmas, Vol. 1. Strange, disturbing (and possibly disturbed) thing – Debussy wrote it in 1915 during World War I as a plea for vengeance, a prayer from the French children that the Germans should have no Christmas.’
Let’s have Michael say a few words about the next recording: ‘It would be easy to say that a collaboration between Steeleye Span and Terry Pratchett was always inevitable, given their respective histories and their proclaimed admiration of each other’s work. It may be an example of retrospective inevitability now that it has actually happened in the form of the Wintersmith CD, however. In any case, the end result is one that is overwhelmingly a credit to all concerned; worthy of the names involved and their reputations.’
Gary says Woven, American Jenna Moynihan’s debut solo release of Scottish-style fiddle tunes ‘I s bursting with contained energy and an obvious love for the music.’ Moynihan, who plays a five-string fiddle, is joined by many other musicians, including iconoclastic Scottish harpist Mairi Chaimbeul, guitarists Courtney Hartman and Owen Marshall, and fiddlers Darol Anger, Duncan Wickel, and Alex Hargreaves.
Judith was very fond of a Klezmer tinged story: ‘The Golden Dreydl is subtitled “A Klezmer Nutcracker for Chanukah.” It combines a children’s story by writer and radio host Ellen Kushner with a klezmer adaptation of tunes from the Nutcracker, originally released by the Shirim Orkestar in 1998 as The Klezmer Nutcracker.’
Lars liked Jul i Folkton quite a bit: ‘Whoever came up with the idea behind Jul i Folkton (Christmas in a Folk Style) must be praised. It seems so simple, yet it works so well. Gather a number of Sweden’s best singers and musicians within the folk and roots field and let them tackle, in small groups, some of our best loved Christmas hymns and songs.’
Robert took a look at a slightly different take on “traditional,” this time an album from Norway: ‘Julevariasjoner translates as “Christmas Variations,” and that is just what this disc by Norwegian pianist Wolfgange Plagge is: a set of variations on Christmas carols, some Norwegian, but many that will be recognized anywhere that Christmas is celebrated.’
Another from Robert, this time of Christmas carols performed by Grex Vocalis, Magnum Mysterium: ‘Although Grex Vocalis is a Norwegian group, the disc also offers carols from France and England and includes a “Norwegian” hymn, “The Infant King,” that originated in the Basque country. The songs themselves range all the way from traditional Norwegian carols and hymns to works by Michael Praetorius (1571-1624) to contemporaries Morten Lauridsen and Javier Busto. With these resources to draw on, it would seem that there is potential for a joyful and compelling offering.’
I’m going to finish our music reviews off with Christmas Revels at Sanders Theater which was written by Vonnie, a longtime writer who died recently of cancer at much too young an age. A diehard fan of the Oysterband of which she provided several recording reviews for us, she also loved the Revels. She’ll be much missed here.
So let’s leave you with some seasonally apt music. Or at least what I consider such which in this case would a steller performance by Loreena McKennitt of her “Dickens’ Dublin”. It’s from ‘A Loreena McKennitt Christmas’ on KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic program from December 1994.
Oh and I should note we make our own Christmas music as well, which you can see in this letter to Ekaterina by Gus on “Carols and Other Matters”.
What’s New for the 6th of January: del Toro: Pan’s Labyrinth, Yugoslav folk music, Richard and Linda Thompson doing trad Irish music, Cape Breton music, a wee hedgehog puppet, Finnan hadddie, more chocolate, Armenian folk music, fantasy noir and a lot more!
Ahhhh, plump pork sausages sizzling in their own fat, eggs any way you like them, palacsinta thick with lekvár, gulyás topped with sour cream, fresh brewed coffee with cream so thick it stands up… Sound good? It is. After a night of playing music, the musicians are always hungry, quite hungry indeed.
So Béla, our long-resident Hungarian violinist, pleased the lot of them — fussy though they be at the best of times — by delivering a crate of spicy Kolbasz sausages packed in ice and sawdust along with another crate that contained Páter Sör, a most excellent Hungarian wheat beer. and yet a third crate loaded with yet more Hungarian goodies for later.
We could even smell it in our rooms under the eaves up on the fourth floor, so we got up, dressed, and went down to the feast! Of course we got music as well, as Béla and several other musicians started playing some of the tunes collected by Béla Bartok, which you can find in Yugoslav Folk Music, his monumental four volume collection.
A collection receives high praise from Gereg: ‘Welcome to the imagination of Kage Baker. Enjoy it; treasure it; don’t get too comfortable here. There won’t be anything new to come. Baker’s death in 2010 stilled one of America’s most original voices.’
A Midori Snyder novel was a winner for Michael: ‘The Flight of Michael McBride is a beautifully spun tale of magic, love, loss, and growing up. It juxtaposes Irish myth, the enigmatic mystique of Native American folklore, the simple charm of folk magic, and the illusion of the Wild West, creating a tapestry that few writers can equal. The only author who’s done anything comparable who springs to mind is Tom Deitz, and his work is more focused on Cherokee myth. There are other authors who have juxtaposed Celtic and Native American themes — Charles de Lint, for example — but in my opinion, Snyder hits a home run with this novel.
Our baseball loving Richard is also fond of mysteries, which is a good thing, as he reviewed this novel: ‘There’s a moment toward the end of Dusty Rainbolt’s Death Under the Crescent Moon that is worth the price of admission all by its lonesome.’
Robert reviewed Dark Jenny: ‘What do you get when you mix the legend of King Arthur with the detective fiction of Raymond Chandler? It seems you come up with Alex Bledsoe’s stories of Eddie LaCrosse, sometime mercenary soldier, sometime hardboiled detective.’ In this novel, he’s in the wrong castle, a situation not uncommon for him.
Robert brings us a film that is both transcendant and depressing, Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth: ‘Pan’s Labyrinth (which, by the way, del Toro insists is a mistranslation; the faun is not intended to be Pan) is, indubitably, filled with poetry that is somehow both rich and bleak, concrete and ethereal. I don’t know if I want to see it again, which in itself is revealing: my enthusiasm is tempered by the realization that viewing this film is being put through an emotional wringer.’
While not so surreal as de Toro’s work, and not nearly as emotionally tough, director Harold Zwart’s Mortal Instruments: City of Bones has a certain appeal: ‘Along with the recent surge of superhero movies, we seem to have had a spate of films based on fantasy/dystopian future science fiction series oriented toward teenagers. This is not necessarily a bad thing, although the results, as might be imagined, are variable.’
Gus tells of finnan haddie, a quintessential Scottish dish made of smoked fish, onions, potatoes, spicing and cream that’s often served as the Eventide meal at this Estate. In New England, it’s often made as a chowder. Here we prefer the lightly fried in the iron pan approach.
Robert got the chore (right) of reviewing three Green & Black’s bars — Organic Milk Chocolate, Organic Maya Gold and Organic Bittersweet Dark Chocolate and he has this crucial note about the company: ‘The provenance of the name, “Green & Black’s,” should be obvious: organic chocolate with a dark, rich color and flavor.’
Stacy says ‘Considering it’s the most important meal of the day, restaurant owner Carrie Levin teaches us what breakfast should be in her new book, The Good Enough to Eat Breakfast Cookbook. After over 20 years at New York’s famous restaurant Good Enough to Eat, Levin generously opens her kitchen and shares her personal tricks of the trade with the home cook.’
Robert has a politically tinged Graphic Novel for us: ‘The collected Red Menace revisits the early 1950s, the heyday of Joe McCarthy and HUAC, when America was paranoid about commie plots and demagogues like McCarthy destroyed lives without much regard for facts. One target was L.A.’s own caped crusader, the Eagle, who happened to be a war hero named Steve Tremaine.’
OK, you do know that we have a resident hedgehog at this Scottish Estate by the name of Hamish? So it won’t surprise you that Robert reviewed this puppet: ‘Well, I finally got my first Folkmanis puppet to review, and appropriately enough, it’s the Little Hedgehog — and let me tell you, he’s a real charmer.’
Gary has good things to say about two Canadian sisters: ‘Cassie and Maggie MacDonald are sisters from Nova Scotia. They were reared in the seaside town of Antigonish (“antee-GO-nish”), just a stone’s throw from Cape Breton Island, and they grew up with Cape Breton music. Sterling Road is their second album, and they sound like seasoned professionals.’
Arsen Petrosyan is a former prodigy on the Armenian wind instrument known as the duduk. He has released his debut album, named after his hometown of Charentsavan. Gary found the music on Charentsavan intriguing and at times haunting. “On this record he attempts to give an overview of the music of the duduk throughout its history, playing songs ancient, contemporary and in-between,” Gary says.
Gereg notes of the Crow Autumn album that ‘It’s hard for me to resist a band with name like “A Broken Consort”, but it didn’t give me a clear idea of what to expect. I approached this album, Crow Autumn, with no expectations.’ Read his review to see what he thought of it.
Lars says ‘Shadows Tall is the second album from Jeana Leslie and Siobhan Miller. The duo met whilst studying at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. They both graduated in 2009 with honours. Indeed, they are two Scottish lassies who should know their business, as they have been hailed as rising stars on the Scottish music scene.’
Australia resident Michael looks at a recent Fairport Convention recording: ‘Having lived with Myths And Heroes for a few days before reviewing, in order to gather various ideas about it, there are a couple of things I think need to be said at the outset. First, the title track – one of several Chris Leslie compositions on the album – is one of the most ridiculously catchy songs the band has ever done. Seriously. It’s not the only real earworm on offer, either. But along with the catchiness is an interesting arrangement that highlights the rock side of folk-rock more so than a lot of Fairport’s more recent material, and intelligent poetic lyrics.’
And now for something completely different: Robert brings us a review of Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons on a disc with two concerti by a little-known Baroque master, Pietro Locatelli: ‘There are many excellent recordings of The Four Seasons available these days, as might be guessed from its ubiquity. The addition of the Locatelli offerings, however, gives this one an edge, and provides a worthy introduction to a little-known Baroque master.’
And taking us even farther back in history, Robert has some thoughts on Trio Mediaeval’s A Worcester Ladymass: ‘I think one reason I’m so fond of Trio Mediaeval is that their attitude toward the performance of early music mirrors my own: in their introduction to this disc, they note that performing music from a thousand years ago (give or take a century or two) necessarily involves as much recreation as interpretation, since any contemporary rendering is filtered through contemporary sensibilities.’
I’ve got a rarity for you this time in the form of the Richard and Linda Thompson Band doing a set of reels, ‘Flogging Reel / Kerry Reel’ at the legendary Paradise in Boston, Massachusetts on May 19, 1982. To my knowledge, it’s a very unusual example of Thompson doing so as both are traditional with the first being known by many names including ‘The Humours Of Bantry Bay’, ‘Kiss The Gunner’s Daughter’, ‘The Newry Lass’ and ‘Ríl An Lasctha’; the latter has a wide range of alternate names including, to name a few, ‘An Rogha Chiarrai’, ‘Capel Street’, ‘The Chapel House’ and ‘John Kelly’s Old Concertina’. Whatever name suits your fancy, enjoy.