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Who knew?

Certainly, we did not. When the eight of us met at WBEZ in Chicago on September 13, 2022, we thought we were taking the first step toward recording a new CD. It was a fine day in the studio, we got a bunch done and it sounded pretty great, but then we spent much of 2023 working on a chamber theater piece that split it's time between LA and Chicago, leaving not much empty space to go back into the studio.

January 5 of 2024 was the next time we gathered to record, this time at Tonal Park in Takoma Park, Maryland - and there were a lot of us. There were the five core members of the group, with Tim Langen on fiddle, and James Oxley, tenor, for a total of seven musicians. Dan was producing, Charlie at the console, and Lindsey overseeing it all.

Honestly, it was a tough session. We had been overly optimistic about what could be achieved, perhaps we were under-rehearsed, and I had cancer.

This is not a poor-pitiful-me-moment. It's just a fact that sometimes when you have cancer and you don't know it, you haven't been diagnosed, nothing feels right, and indeed, nothing felt right.

Even in the haze of exhaustion and infirmity, there were shining, glittering moments of extraordinary music making. Isaac brought his saxophone. Ensemble Galilei, known for early music/traditional music crossover had never, ever, recorded with something that modern. Cape Clear, a traditional Irish air would be played on sax accompanied by the viola da gamba. Who knew? Both instruments rumbled and sang, Isaac's saxophone riding the red-hot coals of grief, with the gamba, in the basement of it's range, providing a partner in darkness. James Oxley poured himself into, Come Away, Death, with Jesse Langen's extraordinary guitar giving space, air, and light to the tune. Bernard McWilliams, the session photographer, was there when the jig set was being recorded, a straight-ahead Irish set that Tim, Jesse and Isaac had assembled a few days before, and he looked me straight in the eye and said, "That is like hearing pure joy." The Boys of Barr na Sraide with it's perfect imperfection still makes me cry when I hear Isaac singing,

And when the hills were bleeding and the rifles they were aflame

To the rebel homes of Kerry the the Saxon strangers came

And the men who fought the Auxies and beat the Black and Tans

Were the boys of Barr na Sraide who hunted for the wren.

There was a biopsy on April 15, I told my surgeon that my first free day to go under the knife was June 17. I had things to do. We had recording sessions already scheduled.

As our producer, Dan Merceruio, and I listened to the tracks from December, there was music that soared and there were pieces that didn't quite rise. We needed a fiddler. I called Hanneke Cassel who lives in Boston, asked her if she might have one day to come to DC to record, and when she said, "Yes, if it's May 6, " we were good to go. I flew up for a rehearsal, we went over the tracks she would be working on, she created beautiful and compelling parts, and May 6 was one of those days of focused creativity that one never forgets.

At that time, there were two projects in the works, on parallel paths. For the first time, we were going to record an early music CD in a conventional classical music style. Ensemble Galilei had always been known as a crossover group, meaning that while it was true that we performed early music, traditional music was always right around the corner. We never sought to achieve a level of historical performance practice that might engage early music audiences, until now.

There were just four of us when we met to rehearse in the spring, and when the rehearsals were over and we were convinced that we had something to say that had never been said before, we scheduled a session for June 6-9. Kathryn Montoya and I were the early music representatives from Ensemble Galilei and we would be joined by the extraordinary lutenist, Ronn McFarlane and the peerless English tenor, James Oxley. Unfortunately, right before James was set to fly to the US from England, he tested positive for Covid. The studio at Sono Luminus had been reserved, Erica Brenner our producer, had her tickets, and Robert Friedrich, our engineer, had packed all the equipment. We were going to record.

That studio is designed for a group to record together - sharing space, hearing the music as it is being played, feeling the resonance of the room. There is no isolation, no overdubbing, no fixing that pesky buzzy string in bar four that will be problematic later. The sound of the recording will be broader, there will be more room sound, and the process is inherently different. You can see each other, hear each other breathe. And if you make a mistake, it lives on in everyone's microphone.

There is, after all, a plus and a minus to everything.

Those days of recording with Kathryn and Ronn were astonishing. Because we had three days booked (and since we weren't recording any of the vocal music), we could focus, really take our time, stretch out and listen, and with Erica gently guiding us, rearrange, and go again. It is rare that time is your friend in the studio, and for us in those days, it was.

We were able to book the studio with James for August 4-6, and there we met again. True confessions, two of the songs that James sang are profoundly important in my life, and the way that he sang John Dowland's Flow My teares and Go Cristall teares made playing the bass line, with Ronn taking the lute part, an exquisite experience. And I do hear it, in the recording. All of that intention, all of that seemingly effortless technique (which we know is not effortless) and the heart that they put into the performances, these are the things that one lives for in music.

I called Collin Rae, the head of Sono Luminus, on the way home from the session, hoping that he might have a great name for this Ensemble Galilei early music spinoff and he suggested that instead of releasing two different projects under two different names, that we release a single recording as a two CD set.

Lindsey Nelson, our executive producer, who seems to always have the wisdom and experience to guide us when we are in uncharted territory, was in the car during that phone call. It was a mind-blowing moment. There were so many things that made sense about it, and at the same time there were major obstacles.

We had always been an ensemble that embraced a wide range of music, so putting early music and traditional music on the same CD was business as usual. But we had recorded in radically different sonic environments, intentionally, and how we would marry these diverse soundscapes was challenging.

But Collin was right. It was crazy to spin off a different group, give it another name, and release a CD. And while it had never occurred to Lindsey or to me, a two-CD set was the perfect solution.

The summer of 2024 was tough, and yet astonishing things kept showing up. A few years before, I looked at our Spotify page for the first time and saw that we had millions of streams. Our big cities were Paris, Seattle, and London, and our demographic was predominantly people in their late teens, twenties, and early thirties, not our usual concert audience - and they were not hearing the music on a Spotify radio station, they were listening and sharing with friends. This was happening all over the world.

And then in August, Come, Gentle Night, the title track of a CD that was released in 2000 on Telarc, caught fire. All of a sudden, our top five cities were all in Turkey. The tune was streamed hundreds of thousands of times, again, shared from one person to another. People were listening.

Radiation started for me in September. For my first session, which would be the longest, the tech asked what I would like to hear and I said, "Me. Us. Ensemble Galilei." He found Ensemble Galilei on Spotify and as I lay on the cold metal table, in the chilly, dimly lit room, I heard Following the Moon, the title track of a CD released in 1995. It was the second tune I had ever written, and it had been decades since the penny-whistle, harp, viola da gamba and fiddle soaring through space had crossed my consciousness.

As I am listening, the machine delivering the radiation starts to rotate across the table, doing it's own, graceful, beautiful dance to the music. Then the next tune, and the next tune and what I realized, in that extreme and novel moment, was that there was a kind of hope and humanity in our music. You could hear it. You could feel it.

I understood that people around the world were listening because these tunes offered them a place to be. Of course it did. We had been making music for thirty-five years because it's what we do, not because we ever had a big breakthrough, or there were sold-out performances at Carnegie Hall. Did it make a difference that now there were over twenty-one millions streams? Yes, actually it did.

We weren't quite finished recording. We needed Jackie to sing As I Roved Out in a way that only he could do, and we needed a great first track for the first CD. Isaac was writing a new tune that would go with an old tune, and he and Jesse finished working on it on Friday, December 13th and aptly named it, The Last Minute. It changed a little after the concert on Saturday, we did it again in concert on Sunday so, sure, it was ready Monday morning.

December 16th was the one day when Dan could fly north, and Jackie, Jesse, Isaac and I would all be in the area, so after our Sunday afternoon concert on December 15th the four of us drove to the studio, met Charlie, set up the microphones, chairs, headphones and whatever else we needed so that we could start recording right at 10:00am, but the next morning there was fog in DC so Dan's flight was delayed. Of course it was. In spite of the challenges we had an extraordinary day, clocked out at 6:00 and everyone made it to their airports on time.

After Dan edited the tracks from Chicago and Takoma Park, after Erica edited the tracks from Sono Luminus, I got to work sequencing. Now that all of this music would be one project, we needed a single person to make the choices, to guide the process, to envision and manifest this opus. It was Dan. It had to be. He had been our north star for fifteen years and the hard decisions would have to be his. Some tracks would not make it into this recording and his expertise, compassion, and patience were essential.

We also needed to get a proof of concept CD to Collin. None of us really knew for sure whether we could make these two very different sonic fields into one compelling project. When I downloaded all the tracks and started putting them into an order that made emotional sense, I started to hear the stories.

But there were problems. There were moments in sequencing the two discs when there seemed to be no way to get from the early music to the Irish music, or back again, and then Kathryn and her recorder solos provided exactly what we needed. In an unexpected turn, the recorder which is so clearly identifiable as an early music instrument became timeless. In her hands, this instrument which is essentially a wooden tube with holes in it, became an expressive and infinitely transmutable pathway for traversing the cultures and centuries. It was miraculous.

It would have been technically possible to have the early music recording and the traditional music recordings come close to matching in sound and space, but honestly, I came to love the differences.

Robert, a master location engineer, had achieved a sound that included the room, with it's high ceiling and hardwood floor, and also brought the resonance of each of us close to the listener. Charlie, who had produced the very first Ensemble Galilei recordings, knew exactly how to place the microphones so that on that amazing guitar solo, Bruach Na Carraige Baine, the pure sound and the overtones would sparkle, and fill the ear. As I listened down through all thirty-four tracks and forty-seven tunes over two CDs, sometimes I felt like I was turning a corner, from one song to another, moving from an Irish hillside to a medieval castle, from one world to another - each of them compelling, expressive, and sonically exquisite.

In the end, if the musicians have brought their hearts, souls, and years of mastery, if the recording team has entered into the space with wisdom, tools, patience and good will, if the executive producer is saying, "Sure, let's book one more session to make this the very best it can possibly be" then the opportunity exists for the listener to hear it all - the breath, the intention, the ensemble, the soloist, the fingers on the strings, the air as it comes out of the recorder, the hands on the regulators of the uilleann pipes, the tipper as it touches the head of the bodhran, the rosin on the fiddle's bow, and feathered end of the note on a viola da gamba. It is all there.

What you do not hear on this recording is the harp being played by EG Emeritus member, Sue Richards. Never in the thirty-five years of Ensemble Galilei has there been a recording without Sue. Who are we without that grace, without her sense of beauty and joy? The answer must be that we are still making music, still telling stories, still finding our way into new territory, trusting our hearts and our sensibilities. Playing music together is a place where we meet, a place that we love, indeed, it is there I long to be.

- Carolyn Surrick, March 10, 2025

Ensemble Galilei

Isaac Alderson - uilleann pipes, Irish flute, whistles, tenor saxophone

Jesse Langen - guitar

Kathryn Montoya - recorders, whistle, shawm

Jackie Moran - banjo, bodhran, egg shaker

Carolyn Surrick - viola da gamba

With

Hanneke Cassel* - fiddle

Gjendine's Bådlåt and Gjendine's Waltz, Boys of Barr na Sraide

Tim Langen - fiddle

Jig Set, When that I was a Tiny Boy

Ronn McFarlane - lute

James Oxley - tenor

*Ensemble Galilei emeritus

Barn Dance no.1 and Leaving St. Kilda were recorded at WBEZ in Chicago on September 13, 2022.

Recording Engineer - Brian Doser

Producer and Editing Engineer - Dan Merceruio

Mixing Engineer - Charlie Pilzer

Producer and Music Director - Carolyn Surrick

Come Away Death, Io son un Pellegrino, Serbian Wedding Dance, Bruach Na Carraige Baine, Cape Clear, When that I was a Little Tiny Boy, Waltz no.1, Sliabh Geal gCua, Aggie Whyte's, The Old Blackthorn Stick, Old Simon the King, The Boys of Barr na Sraide and The Fair Maid of Barra, The Sporting Pitchfork and Scattery Island were recorded at Tonal Park in Takoma Park, Maryland from January 5-7, 2024.

Recording and Mixing Engineer - Charlie Pilzer

Producer and Editing Engineer - Dan Merceruio

Producer and Music Director - Carolyn Surrick

Hanneke Cassel recorded Gjendine's Bådlåt and Gjendine's Waltz, and added her incredible musical sense to The Boys of Barr na Sraide on May 6, 2024 at Tonal Park.

Recording and Mixing Engineer - Charlie Pilzer

Producer and Editing Engineer - Dan Merceruio

Producer and Music Director - Carolyn Surrick

Lament for Owen Roe O'Neill/Allen Water/ Licke-potjen, Fantasias no. 2 and 3, Life, Tweede Stuck, Galliard, Loftus Jones, Suzanna Galliard, Vierde Carileen, Oncques amour, Jesus in Thy Dying Woes, Zesde Petit Brande/Frere Frapar/La Perichone, and Love is the Cause of My Mourning/Miss Noble were recorded at Sono Luminus in Boyce, Virginia from June 6-9, 2024.

Recording and Mixing Engineer - Robert Friedrich

Producer and Editing Engineer - Erica Brenner

Au joli bois, Beware Fair Maids, Flow My Teares, Go Crystall Teares, His Golden Lockes, and Venus Birds were recorded at Sono Luminus in Boyce, Virginia from August 4-6, 2024.

Recording and Mixing Engineer - Robert Friedrich

Producer and Editing Engineer - Erica Brenner

Hewlett and As I Roved Out were recorded on December 16, 2024 at Tonal Park.

Recording and Mixing Engineer - Charlie Pilzer

Producer and Editing Engineer - Dan Merceruio

Producer and Music Director - Carolyn Surrick

Lindsey R. Nelson, Executive Producer.

Recorded, Mixed and Mastered by Robert Friedrich, Five/Four Productions, LLC.®

Produced by Dan Merceruio.

Collin J. Rae, Executive Producer

Joshua Frey, Layout

Carolyn Surrick, Liner Notes

Photography: Bernard McWilliams

Cover Art: Amy Fenton-Shine