Christmas concerts with roots this deep are rare. Americana music talents Laurelyn Dossett, Rhiannon Giddens (of the Carolina Chocolate Drops), Mike Compton, Joe Newberry and Jason Sypher take us on a journey home to the “The Gathering,” where the redbirds sing and the moon keeps watch over a sparkling Carolina winter's night.
Raves and Reviews - The Gathering: A Holiday Concert
Roots/Americana holiday concert featuring Rhiannon Giddens (Carolina Chocolate Drops), Laurelyn Dossett (Polecat Creek), Mike Compton (Nashville Bluegrass Band, Elvis Costello and the Sugarcanes), Joe Newberry (Big Medicine), and Jason Sypher |
Holiday music with roots this deep is rare. LAURELYN DOSSETT, CAROLINA CHOCOLATE DROP RHIANNON GIDDENS, MIKE COMPTON, JOE NEWBERRY AND JASON SYPHER join forces for a holiday concert at City Winery. Featuring original and traditional songs from their new release "The Gathering." |
| City Winery |
Pop and Rock Listings for Dec. 16-22 |
(Saturday) Bluegrass and Appalachian string-band standards take a festive angle in this collaboration between Rhiannon Giddens (of Carolina Chocolate Drops), Mike Compton (Nashville Bluegrass Band) and other roots notables. The evening supports the group’s Christmas album, “The Gathering” (Sycamore Road), which sadly couldn’t convey Ms. Giddens’s ecstatic, dervish dancing. The City Winery stage will have no such problems. At 7 p.m., City Winery, 155 Varick Street, near Spring Street, South Village, (212) 608-0555, citywinery.com; $25 in advance; $30 at the door. (Anderson) |
| Stacey Anderson, NY Times |
Holiday music: Justin Bieber, Michael Buble, Tony Bennett and more |
3 of 4 stars Various Artists, “The Gathering” (Sycamore Road). This old-timey outing with roots in the music of Appalachia consists of a six-part song cycle exploring a woman’s winter journey home. That work, commissioned from songwriter Lauryn Dossett by the North Carolina Symphony, is complemented by similarly rural-based songs sung and played by Dossett, Carolina Chocolate Drops singer Rhiannon Giddens, Joe Newberry, Mike Compton and Jason Sypher. They bring a breath of fresh, pine-scented air to an intensely crowded field. |
| Randy Lewis, LA Times Music Blog |
Under the Tree, but No Sap |
Five established folk-roots artists gathered in a Greensboro, N.C., house to record this unusual album. The first six songs by singer-guitarist Laurelyn Dossett were commissioned by the North Carolina Symphony and tell the tale of a wandering daughter's return to her family home on a winter's night. The next seven tracks are a mix of traditional and old-time holiday folk songs. Three voices work in harmony backed by banjo, mandolin, fiddle, guitar and bass. What the season must have sounded like before shopping and Irving Berlin. |
| Marc Myers, Wall Street Journal |
The Invaluable Lesson Of The Gathering |
Last month, right after Thanksgiving, the North Carolina Symphony gave the premier performance of “The Gathering: A Winter’s Tale In Six Songs,” a work the Symphony had commissioned from Polecat Creek’s Laurelyn Dossett. The musicians Ms. Dossett enlisted to assist her included Rhiannon Giddens of the Carolina Chocolate Crops; the John Hartford and Nashville Bluegrass Bands’ Mike Compton; multi-instrumentalist Joe Newberry; and double-bassist Jason Sypher. It was a hot week in August when the musicians assembled to record Ms. Dossett’s composition and bolster it with seven other new and vintage seasonal tunes to make an entire album of The Gathering. It has a certain magic about it, this music, in the seeming ease of its instrumental virtuosity coupled to a spirit of friendship and common cause—there is not a moment on The Gathering that doesn’t sound free and impassioned, musicians having a great time playing with each other and giving their hearts to the task at hand. |
| David McGee, The Bluegrass Special |
Short Takes: Ray Charles, The B-52s, The Gathering And More |
Ditch the slick, high profile, over-produced, commercially geared superstar holiday product and head to the backwoods with this very different Christmas album. The result of the North Carolina Symphony commissioning a song cycle from roots artist Laurelyn Dossett (Polecat Creek) mixes a few seldom heard covers with originals played by top flight Appalachian/Piedmont-styled musicians including Mike Compton (Elvis Costello & the Sugarcanes, John Hartford) and Carolina Chocolate Drop Rhiannon Giddens. A goosebump inducing “O Holy Night,” stripped down to just standup bass and voice, is alone worth the price, but this classy offering is a much needed alternative to the typically overwrought fare that clogs the season’s racks. |
| Hal Horowitz, American Songwriter |
North Carolina Symphony Brings In an Early Christmas with (Quite) a Bit of Help |
...The aforementioned quartet comprised soprano/violinist Rhiannon Giddens Laffan, Mike Compton on mandolin, Joe Newberry on banjo and guitar, along with singer/songwriter Laurelyn Dossett as first-among-equals and featured composer. Their instrumental/vocal “Rise Up Shepherds” demonstrated their considerable talents and originality. Giddens Laffan brought a stylish soprano to a stylized version of Adam’s “O Holy Night.” She later joined the Concert Singers in a pure and charming rendition of “I Wonder as I Wander”
These performers, with orchestra and chorus, brought forth the featured work of the evening, Dossett’s The Gathering: A Winter’s Tale in Six Songs. This world premiere “folk cantata” told the appealing story of a prodigal’s return home after too long a time away. Within the songs the ambivalent traveler asks, “…will you remember my face?” She eventually discerns “…the light that leads the traveler home.” Interspersed within the movements occurred a veritable banjo-fiddle-guitar-mandolin hoedown, and a dance sequence with gifted hoofers Giddens Laffan and Newberry. One of the songs was a plaintive lullaby employing the Concert Singers.
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| Paul Williams, Classical Voice of NC |
On the Beat |
Most of the time when Rhiannon Giddens is singing with her old-time stringband Carolina Chocolate Drops, you'd never know that she has a classical background. But she started out as an opera singer at Oberlin College, and she flashed some of those chops onstage Friday night at the North Carolina Symphony’s Holiday Pops show at Meymandi Concert Hall. She did a lovely star turn on "O Holy Night," which was the first high point of the evening. Still, that was just a warm-up for the main event, the symphonic preview of "The Gathering" -- Laurelyn Dossett's holiday song cycle about the ups, downs, joys, tears and fears of holiday-season family get-togethers. It was truly lovely, with composer Aaron Grad's Americana-by-way-of-Aaron-Copland arrangements meshing perfectly with the stringband quartet of Dossett, Giddens, banjo player Joe Newberry and mandolin man Mike Compton.
On the outro to the high-spirited "Redbird," Giddens kicked off her high heels to dance and Newberry (a self-described "recovering clogger") was right there with her to do an impressive little soft-shoe number. All I've got to say is it was a far better way to kick off the holidays than a midnight Black Friday sale. "The Gathering" also plays two shows on Saturday, and it's well worth checking out. Hope they will perform it beyond this weekend, too.
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| David Menconi, News and Observer |
Advertisement New holiday music reviews: Be of good ear |
Collections of Appalachian holiday tunes have come along before, but one of the finest is now “The Gathering,” a joint effort by several notable bluegrass players including Rhiannon Gidden (Carolina Chocolate Drops), Mike Compton (Nashville Bluegrass Band) and Laurelyn Dossett (Polecat Creek). Opting for a suite of hymns (“On This Christmas Day”) and breakdowns (Ralph Stanley’s “Old Ebenezer Scrooge”), these players dig deep into fertile North Carolina musical ground for a refreshing blend of wry, homespun stories (“On Christmas Eve”) and poignant moments (“Light in the Lowlands”), all performed with amazing grace and subtle proficiency. Come for the wintry warmth of Dossett’s family tale “Redbird,” but by all means stay for the version of “O Holy Night” sung by Gidden and backed only by upright bassist Jason Sypher. Superb. |
| Thomas Conner, Chicago-Sun Times |
Two NC-based projects put fresh spin on holiday music |
...Elsewhere, Laurelyn Dossett of the folk duo Polecat Creek and the Carolina Chocolate Drops’ Rhiannon Giddens joined Mike Compton (Elvis Costello’s Sugarcanes, John Hartford), Joe Newberry, and Jason Sypher at an NC mountain house in August to record “The Gathering,” a string band take on seasonal music that’s unlike any commercial holiday music you’ve heard this century. Dossett has gained national attention for her song “Anna Lee,” which Levon Helm covered on his Grammy award winning “Dirt Farmer” album. “The Gathering,” which was released November 1, centers around a six song-cycle that she originally wrote for the North Carolina Symphony. The album also features obscure material unearthed by the participants.
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| Courtney Devores, Charlotte Observer |
CD Review |
Commissioned by the North Carolina Symphony to write a group of songs about a prodigal daughter’s journey home on a cold, dark, winter’s night, songwriter and guitarist Laurelyn Dossett put together a stunning group of traditional musicians to help tell the story. They include Rhiannon Giddens (fiddle), Joe Newberry (banjo, guitar), Mike Compton (mandolin, mandola), and Jason Sypher (bass). The album’s first half is “The Gathering: A Winter’s Tale in Six Songs.” Dossett’s compositions are not your typical string band music. We hear thoughtful, inspired music with unique melodies and creative structures.
The stage is set as the opening sentiment is expressed: to light a candle for the night is gathering there. The second song in the series asks “Should I follow the lowland light home?” The album’s cover art (a watercolor by Kenneth Frazelle) is nothing fancy, but it splendidly paints the Carolina hills with their winter aura and cold sensation. As all the family is on the way, “Redbird” tells us that it’s time to get ready for the gathering day with its unique cast of characters. “Redbird Lullaby” is a short, intimate message. “String of Pearls” assumes a devout tone to create a sweetly reverent remembrance of home. The story ends with the moon and sycamore shining with a heart-connecting light like “Diamonds in the Pines.” Spare settings provide accessibility to these six songs, but one is also left wondering if the CD shouldn’t have also incorporated the orchestra that commissioned the work and will debut it in November 2011 in Raleigh, N.C. The second half of the album begins with Compton showcasing his arrangement of Bill Monroe’s “Old Ebenezer Scrooge.” Two Joe Newberry originals (On This Christmas Day, First Day of the Year) are first pew and capture the meaning of the holiday season, as does the classic “I Wonder as I Wander.” The unique arrangement of “O Holy Night” features Giddens and Sypher with a voice and bass duet. Mike Compton sings John Hartford’s “On Christmas Eve,” a song he no doubt learned and performed while playing with Hartford’s touring string band from 1996 until John’s untimely death in 2001. The CD closes with “Christ Was Born on Christmas Morn,” a traditional song with arrangement attributed to a 1929 version by the Cotton Top Mountain Sanctified Singers. All in all, “The Gathering” is certainly not your typical or common Christmas album, and it’s a welcome addition as an alluring project that’s a little different than most. It doesn’t send cold shivers and chills up my spine, but it’s got plenty of beautifully melancholic and nostalgic moments. |
| Joe Ross, Roots Music Report |
Please check back soon for The Gathering: A Holiday Concert's tour schedule.