Music with Maggie
With life getting very busy, the volume of my posts here have regrettably fallen; and of those, most of my recent LiveJournal entries have been more serious. It's been a while since I've written a more light-hearted one. And so, a series of entries catching up on fun stories, since the first of this year. Enjoy. :-)
Fiddling "Sailors Hornpipe" on the topdeck of a cruising ship: *Awesome*. :-)
The story begins... well, I guess, strictly speaking, the story begins with missysedai introducing me to silmaril who introduced me to blueeowyn who introduced me to faireraven and acroyear70, and that's thirteen years (and counting!) of very, very happy history captured in one run-on sentence. :-)
Anyway, thanks to the extraordinary kindness of blueeowyn and faireraven and acroyear70, veteran cast at Maryland Renaissance Festival, I was given the incredible opportunity over the last many years to fiddle a bit at Faire itself, culminating in last autumn's magnificent season. And as noted in that previous entry, thanks to my wonderful friend Brigid, it was at Faire last season I first got the incredible chance to make music with Brigid and with the award-winning musician Maggie Sansone.
Brigid has been taking celtic music instruction from Ms. Sansone, beginning at the time Brigid and I first met during my first real winter in Atlantia. When Ms. Sansone performed her annual sets at Maryland Renaissance Festival last year - as she has been invited to do for more than twenty years - Ms. Sansone invited Brigid to join her. And so it was, one Faire day, between sets with acroyear70 and faireraven, I came by to watch Ms. Sansone perform in Kenwood Lane. Brigid saw me, excitedly waved me over, and Ms. Sansone very generously let me jam with them for a set. One set became two sets became three sets became the whole rest of the marvelous season, joining Ms. Sansone and Brigid and friends for fiddling sets when I wasn't with faireraven and acroyear70. It was an incredible privilege to have been given the chance to make music with one of the foremost and most famous musicians at the Faire, and deeply grateful I am to Ms. Sansone for the chance.
Marevlously, the music with Ms. Sansone didn't end when the Faire season closed for the year. Ms. Sansone keeps up a busy music schedule all year round, from private parties to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. And to my great fortune, from time to time, Ms. Sansone kindly invited Brigid and I to accompany her as session musicians at sessions of all kinds, from inpromptu performances in local music shops, to full-scale billed-performance gigs.
According to local lore, in May of 1774, the residents of the American colonial port Chestertown stormed the British brigantine Geddes and pitched its cargo of tea overboard. The Chestertown Tea Party was part of the rising wave of unrest up and down the American Colonies of the British Crown, that had begun with the Boston Tea Party of Dec. 1773, and would culminate in Lexington, Concord, and all that followed. For the last few decades, the town of Chestertown has been holding an annual celebration in honor. Redcoats and Minutemen in full costume parade down the streets, a tall ship gets boarded and hapless Limeys get dunked, and there's lots and lots of Celtic and Colonial music. Ms. Sansone has been a regular at Chestertown for years; and this year, she kindly invited Brigid and I to join her. On street and on stage, dulcimer and flute and fiddle; it was a merry time.
And that takes us again to a fine Friday evening, when the SS Richard Lee set out from Discovery Village on the west coast of the Cheasapeake, to chase the sunset on the longest day of the year. Ms. Sansone was the featured performer aboard ship, and she invited a number of musicians to join her - Brigid and myself lucky enough to be among them. And so we got to make merry music together, from Cantigas to reels, in the richly appointed cruising cabin and on the topdeck, blown with Cheasapeake breeze. For hours, as brilliant cloudless blue sky became the pastel glories of sundown, the Richard Lee cruised across and through the historic waters, trailing merry music behind it. A lovely evening's music, in a setting wild and free.
Soon another Maryland Rennaisance Festival season will open. Ms. Sansone has already kindly invited us to join her again, for another autumn of Pop Goes the Weasel for dancing little princesses and jigs for step dancers and all the rest of the fun. And with due luck, yet more adventures might yet await. Adventures that happened only because a long succession of gifts from a long succession of friends, the connections that makes wonderful things possible. And so here's to the seasons to come, of music in so many places; including adentures and seasons to come, of music with Maggie. :-)
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Footnote 1: Incidentally, whether the Chestertown Tea Party actually happened is a matter of some historical debate. An Annapolis newspaper from May 1774 published a declaration from residents of Chestertown ("The Chestertown Resolves") opposing the Tea Act and threatening "further measures" against the tea aboard the Geddes, and separate records confirm that the Geddes was docked in that area at that time. What has so far not yet appeared is direct written evidence the Chestertown protesters actually followed through on their threats and actually dumped the tea.
On the other hand, by that point in time, the British Crown explicitly viewed carrying out such an act as treason. Draconian punishments had been leveled against Boston for its Tea Party. Veiled threats and written protests were one thing; actually destroying tea another entirely, potentially subject to a much harsher response. It would not be hard to imagine that even if the Chestertown Tea Party had occurred, local publishers might hesitate bragging about the deed in public, or that Maryland colonial authorities would have done their best to clamp down on the news lest London revoke their governing rights as the Crown had revoked Massachusetts'. And there is a complete lack of *any* kind of *private* local documentary evidence - no diaries, no town minutes, etc - from the same time period, which might have captured what public papers dared not to publish. The issue is more fully explored in Goodheart, A. The American Scholar. Vol 74(4), 21-34..