The first song I ever made on my K Kawai baby grand.  Imagine yourself dressed in silver silk, taking the Queen's hand - surprisingly warm - then whirling like a snow dervish under the frozen stars!

Dance With The Snow Queen

A song to help you come home to yourself after a spell of creative disconnection.  "I've been hoping you'll return - because you are my oldest friend!"

On a Lark

A song for A Celtic Blessing Year, a year-long journey through the Celtic holy-days.

ACBY Michaelmas (The Cailleach)

ACBY Samhain (Let Them In)

A Celtic Blessing Year is a series of blessing songs composed for each of the eight major holy days in the Celtic calendar.

This one was inspired by the folk belief that all the animals kneel down on Christmas Eve and gain the power of human speech for that one night.

ACBY Solstice Christmas (Angels of the Byre)

A song for A Celtic Blessing Year, a year-long journey through the Celtic holy-days.  This one features Brigit, saint and goddess, who is intimately connected with home and hearth and specifically with fire.  The words "Máthair tine" mean, literally, "the mother of the fire," and refer to the ember that was saved nightly by smooring to seed the fire in the morning.  Women, embodying that Brigit spirit, tended the fire faithfully all their lives, bringing their homes to life again and again with their work, faith, and love.

ACBY La 'le Bride (Lady of the Fire)

A song for A Celtic Blessing Year, a year-long journey through the Celtic holy-days.  This one is inspired by St. Patrick who tells us in a letter he left behind that he'd dreamed of an angel who delivered a letter imprinted with the words, "the voice of the Irish" and which invited him to return to Ireland to begin his life's work.  Created on the Spring Equinox, "Spring comes back" is about opening up to dreams of all kinds and letting them guide us to "let the new life begin."

ACBY St Patrick's Day (Spring Comes Back)

A song for A Celtic Blessing Year, a year-long journey through the Celtic holy-days.  "Bringing the Summer Home" reflects the idea that Summer begins on the first of May and it plays with three traditions.  First, the Good Folk journey from their winter home to their summer home on May Eve and I have imagined their beautiful procession in the song.  Second, groups of young people used to dress up and bring "babog na Bealtaine" (the May dolly) door-to-door, singing a song that contains the line, "Thugamar fein an samhradh linn" (We brought the summer with us); the chorus reflects that idea of human cooperation with nature.  And finally, I've woven in here the excitement of quickening, blooming, and burgeoning, and the powerful desire that sets it in motion.  It is an enchanted time with the promise of plentiful food, light, strength, and love.  May we live it to the full!

ACBY Bealtaine (Bringing the Summer Home)

ACBY Summer Solstice (Like the Sun)

ACBY Lunasa (These Golden Days)

Hardy's poem depicts a magical, life-altering journey.  I did my best to capture that enchantment and hope in my musical setting for his poem.

 When I set out for Lyonnesse,
A hundred miles away,
The rime was on the spray,
And starlight lit my lonesomeness
When I set out for Lyonnesse
A hundred miles away.

What would bechance at Lyonnesse
While I should sojourn there
No prophet durst declare,
Nor did the wisest wizard guess
What would bechance at Lyonnesse
While I should sojourn there.

When I came back from Lyonnesse
With magic in my eyes,
All marked with mute surmise
My radiance rare and fathomless,
When I came back from Lyonnesse
With magic in my eyes!
Thomas Hardy

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