Number 41 for January 1, 2023

Happy New Year!

I hope the new year finds you well, safe and still glowing with fond memories of the holiday season just passed.  The holidays are always such a heady time, with so much going on.  Though it’s all great stuff, it can make us sometimes overwhelmed.  Often the winter is the perfect time for catching up with yourself and finding some quiet and peace.

For this blog I want to share a project by the artist Kate McLeod, who has created something she’s calling “The Jean Ritchie Experience,” and her new video has just been released with a beautiful version of Jean’s tune “Wintergrace.”  Here are her notes on the project:

 

This video accompanies the first track of a project that is very dear to my heart, The Jean Ritchie Experience, a series of recordings I’m creating with collaborators, to share the work of American Folk musician, Kentucky-born Jean Ritchie (1922-2015). There will be more song releases over the next few months, with more guest musicians. I hope this video gives you an idea of who I am, and a preview into the music to come. This was created in the same studio that the music track was recorded in, to reflect the sessions and the mood of this song. 

 

On this studio arrangement of Wintergrace I play my old Gibson J-45 acoustic guitar, a mountain dulcimer, and sing the lead vocal track. I included guest musicians (from West Virginia) John Bryant, for his amazing acoustic bass playing, and Morgan Morrison, for her unique and haunting vocal harmonies.

WINTERGRACE
(Jean Ritchie)

This is the time so well we love,
The time of all the year;
When winter calls with chilling breath,
For fireside and good cheer.

A time for man and beast to stand
And feel the season turn;
To watch the stars for secret signs,
And God’s true lessons learn.

For the time when the corn is all into the barn,
The old cow’s breath’s a frosty wine,
And the morn along the fallow field
Doth silver shine.

And when cold morning’s radiant star
Shines over hill and plain;
We know anew that little Babe
Is born to us again.

And man and beast and bird in tree,
Each one in his own place;
We bow our hearts and thank our God
For winter rest and grace.

 

To my readers:  I hope you may find peace, solace, rest and grace, during the upcoming winter months.

Love and Blessings,

Susie

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Award-winning recording artist, Broadway singer, journalist, educator and critically-acclaimed powerhouse vocalist, Susie Glaze has been called “one of the most beautiful voices in bluegrass and folk music today” by Roz Larman of KPFK’s Folk Scene.  LA Weekly voted her ensemble Best New Folk in their Best of LA Weekly for 2019, calling Susie “an incomparable vocalist.”  “A flat out superb vocalist… Glaze delivers warm, amber-toned vocals that explore the psychic depth of a lyric with deft acuity and technical perfection.”  As an educator, Susie has lectured at USC Thornton School of Music and Cal State Northridge on “Balladry to Bluegrass,” illuminating the historical path of ancient folk forms in the United Kingdom to the United States via immigration into the mountains of Appalachia.  Susie has taught workshops since 2018 at California music camps RiverTunes and Vocáli Voice Camp.  She is a current specialist in performance and historian on the work of American folk music icon, Jean Ritchie.  Susie now offers private voice coaching online via the Zoom platform.   www.susieglaze.com