Time with Ezio Bosso, Palazzo Barolo, Torino

Time with Ezio

Alberto Iglesias - Music Sales

Emily Jane White - Dark Undercoat

Buy here: http://bit.ly/16Monbr

Rosemary Standley, a Franco-American singer with a gentle, charismatic voice, tackles Baroque repertory with sobriety and elegance. She is accompanied by the ensemble of Bruno Helstroffer, a guitarist and lutenist at the crossroads between ‘early’ and ‘modern’ worlds, made up of musicians who specialise in early instruments (harpsichord, organ, viola da gamba, serpent). Love, I Obey is the evocative title of a poignant tribute to ballads that seem to warp time. Yes, the music comes from the past, but those who perform it are steeped in the present. One listens to Love, I Obey like a proposition and experiences it like a fantasy, with its everyday stories that give us an insight into History with a capital ‘H’. The in-depth research pursued like a musical detective by the group’s harpsichordist Elisabeth Geiger restores to life pieces forgotten for 400 years, such as the title song by William Lawes: Love, I Obey.

Love I Obey - Rosemary Standley & Helstroffer's Band

La fin de la visite

Holding the Breath

Puerto de Cabopino_001

Charlie Siem - Vaughn Williams - The Lark Ascending

Here is a collaboration with a lovely old friend Liz Monument. Liz and I both studied music at Bretton Hall in Yorkshire a few years ago. Those of you who have had the chance to do something like that will know that the friendships you make there go beyond the social...you share creativity with your classmates and for me, I always keep a cozy seat in my heart for anyone with whom I make good music. Back then, Liz was a fantastic classical guitarist, but since then she has widened her range to encompass many more styles and stringed instruments....including the sparkling harp that features here alongside the guitar. A couple of years ago we renewed friendship via facebook and this year we're making music again via soundcloud. Please listen to more of Liz's beautiful playing at http://soundcloud.com/lizmonument

Here I play the Uillean Pipes and Low Whistle. I absolutely adore the pipes, but they also frustrate me as I don't think I'm physically cut out to play them to the standard I'd like to. But now and then I give them a day out. If by any chance you like the sound here, please do me the favour of going to youtube and checking out what REAL pipers can do, like Paddy Keenan, Cillian Vallely and Davy Spillane.

Liz's harp provides a perfect setting here for Louis MacNeice's amazing poem The Strand. The harp's chords lap like waves on the poet's beach. I have a strong identification with this poem; my father was also a Northern Irish clergyman who “kept something in him solitary and wild”. The last quality time I spent with my father was a wordless walk on such an Irish strand. The image attached to the song is a washed out old slide I took that very winter afternoon....'white Tintoretto clouds' behind Slieve Donard, towering above the beach at Newcastle, County Down. All that's missing is the 'square black figure' beyond the viewfinder to the left. 

The Strand

by Louis MacNeice

White Tintoretto clouds beneath my naked feet,
This mirror of wet sand imputes a lasting mood
To island truancies; my steps repeat

Someone’s who now has left such strands for good
Carrying his boots and paddling like a child,
A square black figure whom the horizon understood -

My father. Who for all his responsibly compiled
Account books of a devout, precise routine
Kept something in him solitary and wild,

So loved the Western sea and no tree’s green
Fulfilled him like these contours of Slievemore
Menaun and Croghaun and the bogs between.

Sixty-odd years behind him and twelve before,
Eyeing the flange of steel in the turning belt of brine
It was sixteen years ago he walked this shore

And the mirror caught his shape which catches mine
But then as now the floor-mop of the foam
Blotted the bright reflections - and no sign

Remains of face or feet when visitors have gone home.

davemckeown.co.uk

The Strand, Dave McKeown with Liz Monument

Balmorhea - "Days"

I did this in one take, recording on Audacity. My intention was to just record it and play with it to see what I could change, I ended up just making a few mistakes and I didn't know what to do to fix them.

I should really go to a recording studio and hire people that know what they are doing.

Bohemian Rhapsody - Classical Guitar

I am a working full-time musician, teaching, performing, composing, recording and arranging, and my gigs in the last few years have included jazz combo, big band jazz, folk, Irish traditional, rock, soul, latin, klezmer, funk, orchestral, chamber, minimal techno, musical theatre and more, so, safe to say, I’ll have a go at anything. 

I'm a firm believer in demolishing boundaries between genres, cultures, languages and ultimately people, and Soundcloud is a terrific place where all this can happen.