In 2017 and 2018, we had the great honor of performing in A Christmas Celtic Sojourn (CCS), a holiday mainstay in the Boston area hosted by Brian O’Donovan of WGBH-Boston. Every year, Brian and his team pull together an all-star cast to present a pageant of music, dance, song, stories, and poetry at the Cutler Majestic Theatre in Boston, which, as Brian likes to say, “looks like the inside of a Fabergé egg!”
Brian first discovered Windborne when he saw our video singing Song of the Lower Classes in front of Trump Tower back in January 2017, and although we don’t do Celtic music per se, we fall into his category of “Celtic roots and branches.” He is a big proponent of harmony singing, and has since played us regularly on his weekly radio show A Celtic Sojourn.
Brian made us feel very welcome that first year when we were secretly pretty intimidated and totally starstruck to be onstage with some very famous people, creating a show that would perform for 16,000 people during its 2 week run!
The cast of CCS has a handful of regulars like cellist Natalie Haas and multi-instrumentalist Seamus Egan, who form the instrumental core of the band onstage. Each year, they also invite a rotating cast of feature artists who present work from their own repertoire as well as learning the CCS standards. In the two years we were in the show, we shared the stage with artists such as the Canadian string group The Fretless, powerhouse Scottish vocalists Mairi Campbell and Hannah Rarity, and Boston’s own uilleann pipes whiz Joey Abarta. As a feature artist in 2017, Windborne knew that it was unlikely that we’d be asked back again soon since they purposefully vary the feature guests from year to year, so we were especially surprised and honored when we were asked back again for the 2018 run!
In preparing for the 2018 season, we brainstormed a long list of songs we would be excited about arranging for the show (admittedly, most of them were songs we’d learned from Nowell Sing We Clear‘s vast repertoire, but you know what they say about the apple not falling far from the tree…). We sent the list off to Brian for his opinion, and he wrote back with his own list, which included John Renbourn‘s Traveller’s Prayer. We’d all sung versions of that piece over the years, but it hadn’t occurred to us for this show because it’s not specifically Christmas-y. However, as soon as we saw it on Brian’s list, we knew it was the one.
The icing on the cake for us came when we moved onstage got to perform this beautiful piece each night under a giant full moon projected on the scrim behind us. It’s hard to see in the video, but it’s in full view in photo below.
It’s been bittersweet for us to watch these videos again in this moment, when all our gigs are canceled and we have to be separated from each other, but they also remind us how much we love singing together, creating new work, and collaborating with other artists. We hope it brings you some joy and tranquility in this chaotic time, and we look forward to bringing you new music sometime soon.
We also wanted to dedicate this piece to Lynn’s mom, Cindy.
