Thanksgiving Weekend Session

Eric, Chris, Rosanne, Dave.

    Rosanne and Dave very graciously hosted a post-Thanksgiving seisiun at their home in Medford last night. Seems I spend a lot of time wandering around unfamiliar Boston neighborhoods lately, sometimes in the dark, often with lots of one-way streets, with incoherent, tiny-print directions from GoogleMap in hand. Someday I'll get a GPS - but that would probably take all the fun out of these city ramblings (and having successfully gotten out of there, reversing the directions while accounting for the one-way streets, in the dark, can only be counted as a miracle - and thank you, Wynter, for your trust in me - if you only knew how lost I thought we were!). It was a great party, with the usual suspects in attendance - a sundry group of people who probably would not know each other except for the music; folks I certainly did not know until the last six months-to-year, people I now count as friends. All I know is this: the first set of tunes I played along with last night transformed me. Suddenly, all was well with the world.
      I have a long way to go, but I know I've come miles since that first night at Paddy Barry's last December when I could barely keep my bow on my strings, or finish a sentence for that matter, I was so terrified. I also know that I make more advances playing - or trying - with the group than I do at home alone. I'm listening differently at a session, pushing myself beyond my limits (and often surprising myself).
     The strange thing about a house session is the lack of pub noise. The music stops, and it's very quiet. Not a bad thing, but a little eerie, in a way. But very nice to be able to have a conversation.
     My awareness of the trad world's being a close-knit community was further enhanced last night by Eric and Colin's late arrival, their having come from Brendan Bulger's session at the Littlest Bar, downtown (Brendan is another of Boston's Irish Trad royalty - fantastic fiddler - one of the finest - from a rather intriguing family), and bringing greetings from David and his parents who were in attendance there; David playing tunes while his parents had dinner. Lovely that Susie and Woody could enjoy a night out in the city while seeing and hearing David shine in his world.

Wynter, Alex, Levi.

Levi, Chris.

Chris

Wynter, Alex, Levi, Colin

Eric, Chris.

Eric, Chris, Rosanne, Dave.

Eric, Chris.

Alex, Levi, Colin.

Seisiun at Eric's

Catching up with myself: highlights from a session a couple of weeks ago at Eric's place; a wonderful space - an old schoolhouse converted into a condo with restored oak floors, high ceilings, and the original blackboards on the wall. Eric's birthday. Shot with a combo of 40D, switching between the 50mm/1.4 (great lens for low light)and the 2mm/2.8 (good for small spaces); and the G9 (for video and a few of the stills). A great party, really.



One of my favorites of the day.



The photojournalist in me loves this vignette - a brief and ordinary moment, made extraordinary.



David



Laura and Eric



Liam



Brian and Ryan



Colin



Alex

Tommy Doyle's, Thanksgiving Eve

The ineffable Sean Connor

Quiet night at Tommy's. The good news was, there were plenty of parking spaces in Harvard Square tonight because everybody was either out of town or home baking pies. For the most part, it was Sean and Yours Truly for most of the session, and Liam came towards the end, in time for the last few tunes. Oh well, it's not quantity, but rather, quality, as they say. It was a pleasure and an honor to play one-on-one with Sean, hanging on for dear life on my fiddle and accompanying him on bouzouki, and catching at least a couple of tunes with the two of them - love you guys.

The above photo was taken with the G12 at 3200 ISO, slightly complicated by the fact that LR3 does not support RAW files from the G12. But at least I know I can come up with some recognizable image with this camera, even in the darkest situation, and yes, it is very dark in Tommy's, so this was a good test for this camera, only hours old at the time (I have since downloaded LR3.3, which does support the G12's RAW files).
(PS, please don't let the empty beer glass next to my fiddle give you the wrong impression...)
Below: Harvard Square at 3200 ISO.

The Greenbriar, November 22, 2010, Brighton, Massachusetts

     I have had an Irish music blog in mind for some time now, and this photo inspired me to get it started. My love for the Irish Traditional Music world - the music and the people - is just too big, too important not to document.
     This image, taken in very low light with my G9 - shot at a 30/sec @ f2.8 with an ISO of 1600 - is not that great, technically, but I love it. I only took one shot, figuring it was a lost cause, which kind of makes the image even more precious. I mean, there was hardly anything on the screen - I had to pull this image back from practically nothing. I don't even mind the grain, being the old Tri-X junkie that I am.
     Above on the right, we have Larry Reynolds, patriarch of the famous Boston Irish music family - "Boston Irish music royalty," as was described to me by a young session friend. I have met Larry, Jr., the talented and affable box-player, a couple of times at Paddy Barry's in Quincy (seisun now defunct - but Paddy's, being the pub where I was introduced to the Irish seisun, will always hold a dear place in my heart), as well as another son,  Mike, also a talented box-player who was leading this Greenbriar session the first (and only other) time I attended, last January. The two players to Larry's right, I don't know their names, but I know they're regulars. In fact, that little corner could be called the inner sanctum of the Greenbriar session. The gentleman on camera left sang, a capella, a poignant tribute to John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the anniversary of whose death it was on that day.
     I rarely have the opportunity to attend this session at the Greenbriar, since I am almost always on the island on Monday nights, but this week I was on vacation - partly due to having been called for jury duty on Monday morning in Dedham (from which I was excused, thank goodness) - so, even though I was exhausted from a couple of late nights in a row over the weekend and didn't think I would make it - I did get over there. It's amazing, how the music and the people and the energy of a session all have the power to revive a weary body, mind, and soul, as I managed to have a total blast, as well as practically close the place down, leaving at close to midnight (of course, let's not talk about my Tuesday). I was very glad to have made the effort, because I knew I would regret blowing one of the few chances I have had, and will have again for a long time to come, to get to The Greenbriar.
    One of the things I love the most, now that I've been on this scene for eleven whole months (my first seisiun at Paddy's will be the subject of another post, I'm sure), is walking in to any session, anywhere in the city, and seeing people I know. On this Monday night, starting with the slow session, I saw Rosanne (guitar and whistle, from Tommy Doyle's), and shortly thereafter, in walked Bob Brogan (old Vineyard fiddler friend - have known him since the 70s when he was crewing aboard the Shenandoah), and eventually Liam (flute, guitar, and singer, whom I met initially at The Banshee in Dorchester, currently from Tommy Doyle's, and in whose circle I now find myself - an amazingly talented fellow; large in every sense of the word) turned up; Alexandra (fiddler from Tommy's - she's amazing; she knows every tune and if she doesn't, she seems to learn them on-the-fly) was there (and it was she and Bob Brogan who were going head to head when I was walking out the door) and there was a fellow, Mike Murphy (mando), whom I met at Eric's birthday party last weekend. Oh, and a treasure of the evening was the opportunity to sit - not once, but twice; at both the slow session and the regular session - next to Brian Henry's (from Paddy's - have not seen him in months - so great to see him again!) grandfather Frank, age 90 or so, from Ireland, who loves the music and always manages to belt out a few songs during the course of the evening, enrapturing all within hearing distance. And the people I didn't know before I got there were certainly warm and welcoming, encouraging me to return. That's what I love as much as the music, to tell you the truth: this wonderful feeling of family; of community, of belonging to something much bigger and older than myself, as profoundly meaningful as any religious service I have ever attended - more so, actually - and I've been to a few.