Tennessee Music Blog by Candace Corrigan

About two years ago, one of my dearest friends, Kathleen Wolff, and I began getting together to play O’Carolan tunes… songs written by an Irish blind harper in the late 17th and early 18th century. Our goal was to be together, playing music we loved. At a recent rehearsal, Kathleen played me the English country dance tune “Childgrove”. It sounded like a Christmas carol to me.

I told her that by the next week’s rehearsal, I would put some words to the tune. I had a vague collection of medieval nativity poems, translated from early English by Brian Stone for the Penguin Classic series. I found one poem that I thought would work, though I had to change some of the lyric to fit the tune. I collected some musicians that I have been working with, we descended upon a very important member of the band, the engineer, Jordan Shirks, and we recorded the song.

Janne Henshaw, one of the collaborators on the O’Carolan project came in, and finished the song with a beautiful harmony vocal.

I hope that you enjoy it as much as Kathleen and I, and everyone, did, and do.

Merry Christmas, Happy holidays, and the happiest of Holidays for all that are close to you.

Harp Kathleen Wolff
Violin Sarah Wilfong
Guitar Donovan Dailey
Bass Rick Diamond
Engineer Jordan Shirks

Vocals Candace Corrigan, Janne Henshaw

Here is the song:

The Christmas Rose

This entry was posted on Friday, December 25th, 2009 at 1:16 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.