After seeing Dick Gaughan last week, another interesting musical experience this week. Our singing group was privileged to have a guest teacher, Brendan Taffe, a Vermont-based musician, song-writer and leader of singing workshops who introduced us to two hours American harmony singing, plus some songs from Zimbabwe. Brendan has a great musical philosophy and is in the UK on a tour of singing workshops. We learned the shocking statistic that probably only 2% of the music we listen to nowadays is live music and Brendan left us encouraged that our involvement in live singing helps to build community spirit and connect better with people in our area.
You can find out more about his music and work here on his website. A Stirling friend's illness meant Brendan was short of accommodation after the workshop so we put him up in our spare room here at Ella Towers for the night - he proved to me that my guitar wasn't really broken by playing the best tunes it has experienced. It seems the problem is me, not the instrument. At least we managed a mini guitar/ harmonica jam.
Brendan has just released a new CD, "Little Boots", which features lots of interesting, moving songs, dance tunes, African instruments (kora!) and some fine playing:
You can hear, and download for free, some of the CD here, and, indeed, order it if you like it here.
A fortuitous, enjoyable and stimulating crossing of paths and hopefully we'll see Brendan round these parts again!
On the road again
And about 30% of what we listen to is just rubbish music these days.
ReplyDeleteI absolutely agree with you that music is best live......
Nice post, great you got to spend extra time with him too.
Cheers...Al.
You have the coolest life.
ReplyDeleteKate - I wish! 9-5 like everybody else and not enought ime to do everything!
ReplyDeleteAl - thanks - yes, it was fun. Keep it live!