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Fire & Grace & Kennedy

Fire & Grace & Kennedy is an eclectic collaboration between American guitarist William Coulter, Canadian violinist Edwin Huizinga, and Irish singer Éilís Kennedy. This unique trio explores the musical elements of classical, traditional and contemporary music and songs. The repertoire is vast, ranging from Bach to Vivaldi, sean nos songs in Irish to original songs in English, tango to trad, Bulgarian to American fiddle tunes and waltzes, all played and sung with a sense of discovery and commitment to the elements of passion and virtuosity found in these diverse traditions. In October of 2017 Fire & Grace & Kennedy performed in Ireland at venues including the Dingle Folk Festival, The Seamus Ennis Arts Center, St John’s Art Center in Listowel, and Campbell’s Tavern in Cloughanover

Eilís Kennedy was born and raised in the heart of West Kerry, to parents who passed on a lifelong and committed interest in the poetry and songs of that region. She has been fortunate to have had the opportunity to listen to many of the finest exponents of song in her locality. The emotion and stories associated with Gaelic singing thus informed her love of song. Éilís plays whistle and Irish flute and is a fluent Gaelic speaker. Her three solo albums have featured William Coulter on guitar and they have worked together on music projects and tours, most recently with violinist Edwin Huizinga. Her latest solo album Westward was released to critical acclaim in December 2016 and led to Eílís being awarded Live Ireland’s Female Vocalist of the Year 2018.

In 2007, she was part of Béal Tuinne, a song cycle, based on her own father Caoimhín Ó Cinnéide’s poems and set to original music by Shaun Davey. This experience was a pivotal one for Eilís, leading to many opportunities working with world-renowned musicians and singers. The common thread was a sense of place, and a pride in the undeniable magic of the music and singing in West Kerry.

In the band Lumiere, Eilís, with Pauline Scanlon, toured Ireland, Australia, the USA and Europe, including performances at Dublin’s National Concert Hall, London’s, Barbican, Melbourne Recital Hall and the legendary Carnegie Hall in New York.

“
A fresh faced, wide horizoned beauty” – The Irish Times –
“A singer completely at home with her material and environment .. a subtle gem” – fRoots UK –

Here’s a cut, Pé in Eirinn Í, from Eílís’s latest album, Westward:

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Celtic Voyage

A compilation album of mostly Gourd Music Artists.
from the website:

Some of today’s leading Celtic performers have contributed to this exciting collection of instrumental music from Ireland, Scotland, Brittany and Wales. This 15-track release, which features 6 new tracks and nine previously recorded compositions covers centuries of Gaelic history and scores of musical styles.

The musical mix includes the fiddling magic of such renowned artists as Alasdair Fraser, Martin Hayes, and Deby Benton Grosjean. Also featured are such noted musicians as Seamus Egan, Paul Machlis, and Kevin Burke as well as Gourd Music recording artists William Coulter, Barry and Shelley Phillips, Danny Carnahan and Robin Petrie, Martin Simpson, Kim Robertson, Orison, and Neal Hellman.
Celtic Voyage features exquisite airs such as Cití na gCumman, All Through the Night, Between Deighre and Breo, and The Quiet Land of Erin alongside such uptempo dance pieces as The Rose in the Heather/Tom Billy’s Jig, The Flowing Tide/The Gypsies/The Roaring Hornpipe, Sliabh Russel/Come West along the Road, St. Patrick’s Day/Over the Moor to Maggie, and Breton Dances. Also featured are a number of compositions by legendary harper Turlough O’Carolan, including The Faerie Queene, Separation of Body and Soul, and The Lament for Owen Roe O’Neil. Along with many longstanding favorites, Celtic Voyage delivers some rarely heard gems, among them, Chanter’s Tune, Rowing from Isla to Uist, and The Butterfly.

Tune List:

  1. Cití Na GCumman – William Coulter
  2. Breton Dances- Danny Carnahan & Robin Petrie
  3. All Through the Night- Kim Robertson
  4. Rose in the Heather/Tom Billy’s Jig- William Coulter
  5. The Faerie Queene – Shelly Phillips & Friends
  6. Rowing from Isla to Uist – Barry Phillips
  7. The Flowing Tide/The Gypsies/The Roaring Hornpipe – Deby Benton Grosjean
  8. Between Deighre and Breo – Barry Phillips, Martin Simpson & Shelly Phillips
  9. Quiet Land of Erin – Kim Robertson
  10. Sliabh Russel/Come West Along the Road – William Coulter
  11. Lament for Owen Roe O’Neil/Foggy Dew- Neal Hellman & Friends
  12. St. Patrick’s Day/Over the Moor to Maggie – William Coulter
  13. The Butterfly – Orison
  14. Separation of Body and Soul – Barry Phillips, Neal Hellman & Shelly Phillips
  15. Chanter’s Tune – Shelly Phillips & Friends
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Jefferson’s Fiddle


Available from the Gourd Music site where it says this about that:

Jefferson’s Fiddle is a delightful collection of modern arrangements and readings of classical and traditional repertoire that showcase Thomas Jefferson’s extensive music library. This new recording features the talents of William Coulter on acoustic guitar and Deby Benton Grosjean on fiddle.

Selections include Scottish tunes such as “Robin Adair,” “The Last Time I Came O’er the Moor,” and “Money Musk.” Three compositions composed for Jefferson by Anglo-Italian musician and painter Maria Cosway are included—“Tacite Ombre,” “Ogni Dolce Aura,” and “Sospiri del Mio Cor.” Also featured is traditional music of America and Ireland, as well as “Sarabande and Gigue” by the Italian composer Archangelo Corelli (1653–1713).
Joining William and Deby on Jefferson’s Fiddle are Barry Phillips, cello; Shelley Phillips, English horn and oboe; Lars Johannesson, flute; Jennifer Cass, pedal harp; Linda Burman-Hall, harpsichord; and Neal Hellman, mountain dulcimer.

Jefferson’s Fiddle – Song List

  • Jefferson and Liberty
  • Aileen Aroon
  • George Washington’s Favorite Cotillion/Corn Riggs Are Bonny
  • The Last Time I Came O’er the Moor
  • Ogni Dolce Aura
  • Rustic Reel/Off She Goes
  • Adagio
  • Menuet
  • Thugamar Féin an Samhradh Linn
  • Tacite Ombre
  • Money Musk Stathspey and Reel
  • Sarabande
  • Gigue
  • Robin Adair
  • Sospiri del Mio Cor

Listen on SoundCloud:

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One Sweet Kiss – Éilís Kennedy

from The Living Tradition July/Aug 06:

Eilis Kennedy has one of the loveliest voices to recently emerge in Irish singing. Accompanied by a plethora of talented musicians, Kennedy’s second album is ten tracks of wonderfully sung and arranged songs.

Focusing heavily on a traditional repertoire, Kennedy sings in both English and Irish, choosing songs that highlight her pure voice.

Beginning with ‘Go From My Window’, the English songs go on to include the tragic ‘Fair Helen of Kirkconnel’ and the melancholy ‘Farewell to Tarwathie’. But lest you think this album is a depressing collection of ballads. Kennedy spices things up with some Bob Dylan in the form of ‘Boots of Spanish Leather’, and some fantastic Irish-language tracks including ‘Aillillin na Gamhna’ and the rollicking ‘An Paistin Fionn’. The latter has a great beat and Kennedy’s voice lightly trips along the jaunty tune. Ending with The Parting Song’, a gentle song of leaving, the album finishes on a beautiful note.

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Time to Sail – Éilís Kennedy

from the BBC Radio 2 Folk Web Site:

Kerry-born Éilís (say Aylish) Kennedy comes of an Irish family where both music and the Gaelic language were part of everyday life, a happy fact reflected in this debut album. Time To Sail was recorded in her home town of Dingle and features, apart from her own pure, natural voice, a ton of top Irish artists including Máire Breathnach (fiddle, viola), William Coulter (guitar), Virginia McKee (clarinet), Bruce Abraham (slide guitar) and Séamus Begley (vocal).

Subtle and lush arrangements woven around traditional songs in two languages are the order of the day. Most of the ten tracks have been round the block many a time but Kennedy reworks them with a freshness that belies any qualms of pastiche. The Factory Girl, bouncing along on Gregg Sheehan’s funky percussion, dives into two slide guitar and kalimba-drenched barn dances; gorgeous layers of cello and clarinet drive away any echoes of Sandy Denny in Crazy Man Michael and Who Knows Where The Time Goes; Black is the Colour’s characterful phrasing and spooky slide guitar/woodwind soundscape prevents it neatly from stepping on Cara Dillon’s justly acclaimed version. Of the less familiar material, two Gaelic songs in particular tug the heartstrings – Amhrán na Leabhar (The Song Of Books), an 18th century poet’s lament for the loss of a boatload of beloved books to the sea and a song of loves’ tribulations, Tá Mé ‘mo Shuí.

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Westward – Éilís Kennedy

Independent Release – 2017

From Neil McFadyen’s lovely writeup at FolkRadio UK:

Growing up on the western edge of County Kerry’s Dingle Peninsula; for singer/songwriter Éilís Kennedy the poetry, songs and music of Gaeldom were, and remain, a constant influence. Those influences extend even further for her new album, Westward, as Éilís is joined by friends from Atlantic and Pacific coastlines on an album that sees her expand her outlook and her own musical skills. In addition to her musical partnership with Pauline Scanlon, as Lumiere, Éilís has also released two very well received solo albums – Time to Sail in 2001 and One Sweet Kiss in 2005. Both albums offered an enchanting mix of traditional and contemporary Gaelic and English song, and made the most of the musical contacts Éilís and her husband John have nurtured as proprietors of John Benny’s pub in Dingle – renowned for the quality of its music sessions.

Éilís opens Westward by evoking the warm atmosphere of those sessions with the gentle familiarity of Bill Caddick‘s John o’ Dreams, a song perfectly suited to her soft, lilting voice. In both her previous albums, Éilís collaborated, very successfully, with Santa Cruz guitarist William Coulter. William’s Grammy-Award winning fingerstyle guitar provides Westward with a constant companion to Éilís’ vocal, and the equally familiar sound of cellist Barry Phillips, who also joined William on Éilís’ previous albums, adds a somnambulant richness.

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Happy Here

This album with Ben Verdery, is available at Gourd Music.

William Coulter and Ben Verdery have found a unique and energizing partnership.Their space is made of acoustic strings. Strings have their own kind of chemistry, and steel and nylon played together have their own subtle dynamic and exchange. They talk back and forth, like old friends who don’t get together as often as they’d like to.

Something original is going on. Part of it is the mix of strings themselves – one guitar strung with steel, another strung with nylon. We seldom hear this. Ben Verdery says that he tried it once before, in a couple of tunes recorded years back with Leo Kottke. It makes a very pleasing mix of textures, like silk laid next to satin. One helps to define the other.

But the more important chemistry is what the performers release in one another as they play. Bill Coulter and Ben Verdery have found a unique and energizing partnership. What we get from Bill & Ben is a guitar performance at its most intimate. There is heart here and a meditative quality. Each musician goes inward to his still center, in order to come outward with a shared sound that is masterful yet vulnerable.

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Celtic Crossing

Celtic Crossing is available from Gourd Records

Here I’m joined by Shelley and Barry Phillips, Irish fiddler extraordinaire Kevin Burke, and others. The tunes include beloved traditionals The Lark in the Morning, Si bheag, Si mhor, Banish Misfortune, Lagan Love, The Kesh Jig and Return to Fingal. You’ll also find unexpected treasures including the lullaby Einini*, Ay Linda Amiga from Celtic Spain, and the Victorian Marble Halls.


*Featured on the Narada Sampler Celtic Legacy.

I also published a book of arrangements for these tunes. It’s also available at Gourd Music.

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Orison

This record, from 1988, can be found over at Gourd Music
Five San Francisco Bay instrumentalists take the name Orison from the old-fashioned word for prayer or invocaiton (see Hamlet, III, i). They are: Barry Phillips, Shelley Phillips, William Coulter, Steve Coulter and Anne Cleveland, whose repertoire includes music from both the folk and classical traditions (The Butterfly*, Arran Boat Song, The Maids of Mitchelston, The Water Kilpie, Morgan Megan and more), along with original compositions. Their combinations of harp, guitar, cello, oboe, English horn, flute and percussion produce textures of etheral and poignant beauty.

the liner notes:

The Arran Boat Song comes from the Arran Islands off the west coast of Ireland, a traditional tune in a contemporary setting.

Pierre on the Mountain Playing the Hurdy Gurdy is a medley. The first tune in it is a French one we learned from Pierre Bensusan. It is followed by an Irish slip jig called Kid on the Mountain, originally in 9/8, our setting is in 7/8. Followed by an obscure French hurdy gurdy tune, the title of which is unknown to us.

Morning Rain is a solo steel string guitar piece composed with the help of digital delay. Dedicated by composer William Coulter to the weather.

The Dance of the Spirits of Water is from Holst’s opera The Perfect Fool. The Golden Goose is a slip jig from the composer’s ballet of the same name.

William Coulter composed Pastorale in 1986, inspired by the beauty of the Santa Cruz mountains.

The Water Kilpie, a Manx tune from the Isle of Man, tells the story of a water fairy. The Maids of Mitchelston is a slow Irish reel which we adapted from an arrangement by the Irish group the Bothy Band.

The Butterfly is an Irish slip jig played here in three different time signatures, 9/8, and altered 9/8 (2 + 2 + 2 + 3), and 11/8 (2 + 2 + 3 + 2 + 2). These rhythms are borrowed from Bulgarian folk music.

Morgan Megan is by Turlough O’Carolan, the blind harper and composer who lived in Ireland from 1670-1738 and dedicated many of his tunes to his patrons.

William Coulter composed Bob’s Room while visiting a good friend whose interior decor was particularly inspiring.