Tuesday, June 28, 2016
Tim Eriksen with special guest Susan Brearey
The Magic Lantern: Songs, Stories and Projections From an Imaginary New England Village
Tim Eriksen, multi-instrumentalist, “one of the best singers in music” (T-Bone Burnett) and three time GRAMMY nominee presents a solo performance of original music, traditional Americana and music from his world travels, joined by painter/projectionist Susan Brearey in selections from their multimedia collaboration.
The Magic Lantern: A mysterious trunk found in a Yankee attic, full of leatherbound tunebooks, letters, musical instruments, 8 track tapes, a handwritten sheaf of ballads, a machete and even an old “magic lantern:” an ancient projector, with a box of painted glass slides. Tim Eriksen and painter Susan Brearey take you to Pumpkintown, revealing the mysteries of the trunk and the curious multicultural history of the village itself, through songs, stories and magic lantern projections.
Tim Eriksen is "widely regarded as the best ballad singer of his generation" (BBC Radio). He combines hair-raising vocals with savvy arrangements for fiddle, banjo, guitar and bajo sexto, transforming American tradition with a "northern roots" sound that embraces old New England murder ballads, “shape-note” gospel and haunted originals alongside Southern Appalachian and Irish songs. Tim's latest solo album "Northern Roots Live in Namest" (Indies Scope 2009) celebrates the power of this music in concert.
Considered "among the world's finest folk practitioners" (Toronto Star) for his expertise in traditional song, Tim is also known for his own compositions - “strange and original works” (NetRhythmsUK) with a “rare sense of purpose” (Q Magazine) that have been included in films like the Billy Bob Thornton vehicle Chrystal and the upcoming feature documentary Behold the Earth. Eriksen's other notable work has included extensive contributions to Anthony Minghella’s 2004 Oscar-winning film Cold Mountain as well as collaborations ranging from hardcore punk and Bosnian pop to symphony orchestra and the 2009 Grammy-nominated album Across the Divide with Afro-Cuban world-jazz phenomenon Omar Sosa.
The erstwhile frontman of the prophetic groups Cordelia's Dad ("folk-noise"), Northampton Harmony (shape-note quartet) and Zabe i Babe (Bosnian folk and pop), Tim Eriksen is the only musician to have shared the stage with both Kurt Cobain and Doc Watson (not to mention Jack White and Ralph Stanley), and his media appearances have ranged from Prairie Home Companion to the Academy Awards. Having graduated from early shows at punk mecca CBGB, Tim’s more recent performances have included his Carnegie Hall debut as a soloist in Evan Chambers' symphonic work "The Old Burying Ground" and two week-long stints at the Blue Note Jazz Club with Omar Sosa. In the studio, he has worked with producers including Joe Boyd, T-Bone Burnett and Steve Albini.
http://www.timeriksenmusic.com/about.html
Susan Brearey is a painter known for her unique, iconic depiction of animals. In Brearey’s works, totemic images take the place of the photorealistic visual details found in some other works of wildlife art. Animals become rudimentary and almost featureless, set against abstract surfaces. Brearey’s evocative approach was inspired in large part by the cave paintings at Lascaux, France. Brearey first saw the paintings in the mid-1980s as a college student, an experience that turned her into a serious painter.
Brearey’s paintings have been the subject of numerous solo exhibits in Seattle, Washington; West Bretton, England, Jackson Hole, Wyoming; Martha’s Vineyard; Orlando, Florida; and Providence, Rhode Island, among other places. Her works have also been numerous group exhibits, including Post-Pastoral: New Images of the New England Landscape at Dartmouth College’s Hood Museum of Art and the Clarke Galleries’ IV Centuries of Birds in Painting, Sculpture, and Fine Prints. Her works are in the collections of Nashville, Tennessee’s Cheekwood Museum of Art; the Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, Vermont; the Putney School, Putney, Vermont; the Bank of Boston, Boston, Massachusetts; and the Meditech Corporation, Westwood, Massachusetts. In 1993, Brearey won the Cheekwood National Contemporary Painting Competition.