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Mick Sands with Clive Carroll. the ominous and the luminous
Track 1 Up the Raw. (trad./original arr. Sands)
A much loved song from the Northumbrian Minstrelsey. The extra two verse commentary came out of a reverie about the song and my own family story. The final tune is "Farewell" from the Northumbrian Pipers' Tunebook.
Track 2 Autobiography. (text: copyright Louis MacNeice estate/ original music arr. Sands)
A favourite MacNeice poem. I was commissioned to write a piece of music and this was part of the result. The poet's father was a priest in Northern Ireland, later a bishop. His mother suffered from a mental illness when he was a child.
Track 3 The Slave's Lament. (Burns arr. Sands)
I came across this lovely song in Burns' Complete Works along with the tune and just had to sing it. 1794......and the abolitionist movement gaining momentum throughout Europe........
Track 4 I Drew My Ship. (trad. arr. Sands/Carroll)
Another love-lost, love missed, road not taken, 'if only' story. Again from the Minstrelsey.
Track 5 Midsummer Reels. (original arr. Sands/Carroll)
Three reels I've written for an Irish version of Strindberg's "Miss Julie" - Frank McGuiness translation - in the 2006 Peter Hall season at the Theatre Royal, Bath.
Track 6 Lough Erne's Shore. (trad. arr. Sands/Carroll)
A well-known pentatonic Fermanagh love song, probably by a hedge-school master in the gaelic tradition deriving ultimately from the French 'reverdie' genre. I first heard it from Cathal McConnell.
Track 7 Where the Deerness Flows. ( original arr.Sands)
Written in January 2006 as I reflected on the village and valley of my birth and upbringing - one of the 'mineral' valleys of the West Durham coalfield which has changed dramatically in my lifetime.
Track 8 Donal Og. (traditional arr. Sands)
An 800 year old song from the Irish Medieval tradition which doesn 't capture the breadth of Lady Gregory's translation of the original poem yet still haunts with its bitter sweetness and dignity in the face of betrayal. I learnt this from the singing of Paddy Tunney.
Track 9 Maid on the Shore. (trad. text/original tune arr. Sands)
A version of the well-known female trickster ballad - with an Irish flavour. I wrote the tune on Sherkin Island, West Cork.
Track 10 Silver Dagger. (trad. Appalachian arr. Sands/Carroll)
A fine version of the ballad from the singing of Julie Clark (via Moira Smiley), a young American singer who learnt it from her Appalachian grandmother. The formal ballad structure holds/contains the awful truth of the dark family pathology like a classic Greek tragedy.
Track 11 Forest Fields. (trad. arr. Sands/Carroll)
The first air is from Romania, 'Joc de Legagne', the second 'Winnie Haynes', a well-known Irish session jig, and the third a slip-jig I composed last autumn in an area of Nottingham called 'Forest Fields'.
Track 12 Cunla. (trad. arr. Sands)
An Irish/English song about the 'Demon Lover' archetype - dangerous, exciting, seductive and out of control. From Seamus Ennis.
Track 13 Tres Damas. (trad. text/original music arr.Sands)
I set this traditional Sephardic text to music for a Royal Shakespeare Company production of a 1630 Philip Massinger play "Believe What You Will", part of the 2005 'Gunpowder' season. It is the mysterious, love-charged observations by a man of his wife going to church and hints at secrecy and betrayal.
Track 14 When the Boat Comes In. (trad. arr.Sands)
The earlier recording I made of this well-known Northumbrian song has helped to sell a lot of fish 'off the telly' so I've redone it and include it here along with a tune I wrote for a Peter Hall Company production of "As You Like It" - "Jump As You Like It ".
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