Reviews of The Portland Collection, Volume 3
David Kaynor
May 18, 2015: Facebook
Years ago … 18, maybe? … in the old usenet rec.folk-dancing online forum, I wrote one of the earlier and possibly most exuberantly enthusiastic reviews of the first _Portland Collection_. I wish I could find that review now; it would be totally germaine today.
I suspect I’m not alone in having a more complex, personal involvement with this volume than with its predecessors. Certain tunes, Clyde Curley’s eloquent background writings about them, and some mostly untold stories which pertain, reconnect me to the sorrow, grief, and regret of friends lost and friendships lost since Volume Two came out. At the same time, other tunes and stories attest to discoveries, recoveries, triumphs, and new beginnings. There’s an emotional trigger of one sort or another on nearly every page.
Rest assured: The tunes not laden with emotional freight are also easy to read, fun to try, and full of promise. One of the beauties of old traditional tunes is how reliably welcoming and promising they can be, regardless of a player’s current mood or outlook. Whether you’re happy or sad, these tunes offer fertile ground where you can put down some roots of interest and curiosity, cultivate them, and wind up with a nourishing and sustaining musical life form, a friend for all time.
Volume Three goes even farther than One and Two in sharing not only a plethora of great tunes in a comfortably readable format, but, in a highly readable narrative, connections to places and lives and times of people from whence they come.
Kevin Carr
Fiddler Magazine, Winter, 2015/16
www.fiddle.com
The two previous volumes of the Portland Collection have given musicians a cornucopia of the best in dance music as played in the Pacific Northwest, which is an area rich with fine dance musicians. Volume 3 continues and deepens the series. Susan Songer, who has the deftest ear for a good tune, and Clyde Curley, a wordsmith of epic skills as well as a master musician, provide deeply researched versions of tunes as well as the commentary needed to ground these melodies in the real world. Anecdotes about provenance of tunes, composers’ own stories of inspiration for tunes, musicians’ experiences with tunes and advice on their particular usefulness, and a host of other tales concerning the music make this a living document and invite the reader into the world of the dance musician in a unique way. Accompanists will appreciate the thoroughly considered chord suggestions.
While traditional tunes are well represented, there are many, many wonderful modern tunes from composers living and passed, in old time, contra, Scots, Irish, and Québécois genres. I was particularly happy to see so much material from Québec. As is made clear by Songer and Curley, these books are not a substitute for listening and learning the subtleties of style by ear. But for the interested and involved dance musician, they are pure gold.