Hear some Songs
Gi'e me a spark o' Nature's fire! That's a' the learning I desire.
-Robert Burns
Castlebay transports their audience through time and across the Atlantic with songs and music appreciative of nature and of humanity's relationship with the environment. Like the heritage and culture of Maine's Pemaquid peninsula, the music of Julia Lane and Fred Gosbee has it's roots both in the British Isles and Ireland as well as the energy of the land and sea itself.
Their songs are inspired by their own experiences of living in Maine, their family histories, local stories and the elemental beauty of the area. The music and stories they share rekindle an ancient fire at which all may gather.
The Music of What Happens Show/Hide
The people who inhabit a region resonate to their environment working with it to survive and to enrich their lives. Work habits and social behaviors arise according to their experience with seasons, weather and the condition of the land. From these elemental relationships come belief systems, folklore, music, and religion.
Traditional songs and tunes are usually learned from the very rich oral tradition. This means that versions of the music may vary from region to region and from one musician to another. Immigrants carry with them the traditions and folkways of their ancestors including stories, music and dance.
Their songs not only connect them to their birthplace and the generations before them, they help to process and validate their own experiences in the new place and the musician is often inspired to create new music in the genre.
Celtic music, as with that of any indigenous people, springs from a spiritual tradition and the music itself can be viewed as the manifestation of an essential spiritual connection.
Like the Native American peoples, the Celts were migrant tribes with an awareness of relationships and value for connections both with family and clan and to Nature and Spirit. The music is alive with imagery and symbolism associated with our relationship to the natural world.
In ancient times, storytelling lore-keepers and bards used music to convey social, political and spiritual ideas. In a non-literate society, they were the libraries, archivists and social commentators. The music itself was known to elicit transformational response.
Today, the influence of the storyteller and songwriter remains powerful and important as the words and melodies are vehicles for explaining and re-creating our relationships. Hearing and understanding this ancient lore and music, inspired by elemental experience, can help us refill our own wells of creativity and reweave the web of connection. Timeless, they provide revelation and healing for both the bard and the audience.
About the Artists
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Julia Lane
has loved, sung, researched and created folk music since childhood. Growning up in New England, she studied music theory and took guitar lessons from a lutenist specializing in Elizabethan songs and flamenco. She became active in madrigal and Renaissance music groups, played as a soloist and provided music for a children's theater group. Show/Hide
Having had wide experience with community theater, both onstage and in production, Fred combined his theatrical experience with his knowledge of folk music when he arranged, composed, and performed new incidental music for a production of A Spoon River Anthology. The resulting sound tapestry included 56 pieces of music performed live for each show.
has toured the eastern US, Maritime Provences, Great Britian and Ireland. While much of the music they perform and compose is inspired by their native Maine, they have also been moved to write by places they have visited including the Isle of Skye, Dumfries & Galloway, and Costa Rica. They have done many concert programs and also workshops exploring Celtic spirituality through music and poetry.
After graduating from Phillips Exeter Academy, her interest in English and Scottish folk music and lore led her to study in Oxford, England. She continues to conduct in-depth research into the social history and folkways of the Celtic lands and her native New England. Utilizing the power of music in conveying a story, she has created multimedia programs of history and myth with both traditional and original music.
Julia has studied piano, classical and flamenco guitar, and voice. A self-taught player of the Celtic folk harp, her unique style has won three international competitions. She is also a fine vocalist whose voice has been compared favorably with Loreena McKennitt, Jean Redpath and Judy Collins.
Julia enjoys researching dusty tomes for obscure information. She also engages in "full contact" gardening at her home on the Maine coast.
Fred Gosbee
has collected and performed folk music for over thirty years. As a child in Central Maine, he heard his older relatives singing the old woodsmen's songs and playing fiddle and accordion. At the University of Maine, he was inspired by the folk music he heard in a college folklore class with Dr. Sandy Ives who became Fred's advisor. Dr. Ives became influential in Fred's awareness and appreciation for his own heritage of folk music.
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Fred has continued to write original songs in the traditional style, celebrating the humor and humanity of ordinary people. His works have since been recorded by other artists and have garnered him invitations to international music festivals.
He currently sings and plays classic and 12-string guitar, viola, fiddle, and Irish flute and tin whistle and enjoys experimenting with both traditional and ethnic instruments. (He has been known to elicit music from a squash vine). Fred is also a skilled technician and woodworker. When he is not touring, he engineers and produces recordings as well as designing and building Celtic harps and other instruments.
Castlebay Show/Hide
Quotes Show/Hide
What captivated us were Julia and Fred's musicianship, the apparent casualness with which they weave their listeners into magical worlds of storytelling, song, and harp, and their down-to-earth (and sea) Maine coast and Celtic tunes, tales, and salty humor.
-- Wistariahurst Museum, Holyoke, MA
I will remember last evening with pleasure for a long time to come. When you play the music, you not only play the music, you are the music, and while you play, I am the music too...a lovely experience. Thank you again for gracing our little stage.
Yours,
Georgia
Where We Perform
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We have expanded our tour schedule to include the entire eastern seaboard of the U.S. and have made annual tours of the United Kingdom since 1993. We have also performed in the Los Angeles area, Durango, Colorado, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia.
We perform at festivals, concert series, and folk clubs. We also teach cultural history through music in schools, libraries, museums, and elder hostels. Since 1990 we have performed at over 450 weddings and innumerable other private functions.
Castlebay performs at many festivals in the eastern U.S. and Great Britian. Here is a partial list:
Commissions and Special Projects
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Inspired by a trip to the Isle of Skye in Scotland in 1993, Julia & Fred composed a suite of tunes called The Skye Suite. Performed by an ensemble of violin, viola, cello and harp, the 15-minute work was presented with slides of the Isle of Skye. This piece was performed several times at various locations in Maine and Massachusetts.
In 1998 Castlebay was comissioned by the Dumfries and Galloway Arts Association, in Scotland, to write music for "Sang O the Solway", a cultural celebration of the region. This two-hour piece was performed several times throughout southwestern Scotland, culminating in a concert at the Celtic Connections Festival in Glasgow.
Julia spent five years researching an historic shipwreck and has written a staged dramatization with music called The Grand Design. This was premiered in 2006 in Damariscotta and has since been presented several times since the initial run in locales as far as Grand Manan Island, NB, and Anderson, SC. This multi-media production includes five musicians, a cast of 15-25 actors, and projected imagesimages.
As a duo,Castlebay produced 18 CDs between 1994 and 2009 in addition to work on other artists' recordings on both sides of the Atlantic. Included in their body of work is a six-part series of Celtic instrumental music, four holiday harp CDs, a winter humor CD, two CDs of original work (mostly songs), a live concert CD, and three CDs of traditional songs. Concert Video Flagler College Auditorium, February, 2006
2008-05-25 © Castlebay, Inc.
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