We meet Tuesdays at 8 as usual, even in icy windy rain like last night! We love meeting new people and hearing new tunes.
Exciting news as well, I hear The Union are trying a different draft ale each week, we had Bath Gem last night and it was very nice indeed. We love our venue, and the session has been mentionied in a couple of online reviews of the hotel (nothing nasty!)
If you were dying to get folky, the 31st December is just the wrong day for it. We’ll resume next week. Happy New Year!
Many of us have exhausted ourselves with out town’s celebrations this past week. With the new energy that the festival and the mid summer sun has brought us, let’s have some new tunes to revitalise us.
What tunes do you know on the theme of energy and exercise?
So a few people will be late to the session at The Union for the next 6 weeks. This is due to Golowan Band Rehearsals! If you arrive at 8 and no one is there, don’t despair! People come to our session throughout the evening as and when they can. Last week we had 17 musicians – so if it’s busy draw up a chair from one of the tables and try to keep an aisle clear to the back of the pub.
Have you ever wanted to a join a session but don’t quite understand how sessions work? Don’t worry, we don’t either, but this page might help you with some burning questions you might have.
Feel free to come and chat to us, we are a well friendly bunch. If you’re new to folk music and you are a little nervous and unsure but want to have a go at joining in, let us know and we’ll try to help you where we can!
Better late than never! The Wren or “An Dro”. This tune has Breton origins, and here at The Union we do love a bit of Breton.
https://thesession.org/tunes/2828 Setting 7 is the most similar to what we have been playing.
Play this to your loved ones today to win their hearts.
A cheerful tune one of our sessioners introduced to us last week to keep us going through January.
And here are the notes on The Session: Harlequin Air
Apologies for the radio silence, there has been a switching of devices. The trees are up, there’s frost in the air – sorry, typo – RAIN in the air, and our tartan clad hotel bar is looking very festive. Here in Penzance, we don’t just await Christmas, but it’s also the pagan midwinter solstice celebtration MONTOL on the 21st. So on the 20th we’ll be warming the place up with some dark and ghastly celtic tunes, along with any of the usual tunes and banter. Caroling encouraged!
We’ll leave it on the following Tuesday (Boxing day) and see you in the new year.
A very merry Christmas and a happy and healthy 2024 to all of our musicians and supporters.
The sun hides away, yet the musicians still come out to play. We must scare winter off with all we can muster. Last week, we had a merry troup of 15 musicians again, with travellers from overseas and from Northern lands. A very talented mother and son duo had us all clapping to a Ukrainian foot stomper and some super jigs and Old-Time.
Now we are late in the year, how about playing some songs of the night. Darkness, chilly eves and starry skies, moons and planets, dig out your night time tunes and bring them into the light for all to hear.
For a welcome change from my ramblings, I’d like to include a special bit of writing on this week’s blog to get us in the mood for autumn, by Dr Tehmina Goskar, one of our fine fiddlers at the trad session:
Under darker skies
As the season shifts Autumn turns our gaze upwards towards colourful sunsets and darker, starry skies, moody clouds. Scents of wood smoke and warm earth mingle with browning leaves. My thoughts turn homewards, to hunkering down, coziness and comfort, much hibernation but also huddling close and playing out the long evenings with music and song among friends.
I think toward our minor key tunes and those with unusual modalities. In Cornwall October is an important time in the fishing seasons, whether for native oysters dredged carefully under sail in the Fal or seining for pilchards in Mounts bay, much of this happens under dark skies. I wrote the jig Salt and Silver in tribute to pilchards and the women in the presses who organised themselves like the brigade systems in Michelin Star restaurants to preserve and pack this internationally-renowned fish. John Dory is another simple jig, also played as a three-man tune (a round) which we play following a tune from a hymnal collected in Nancledra called O What Is That Upon Thy Head? For an upbeat tribute to fishing communities, what about the Fisher’s Hornpipe?
Meanwhile the land is ploughed and turned ready for winter crops, livestock are brought towards the homestead. There is an air found in the Cornish collection at Morval House called the Despairing Shepherd, in Am, that I am reminded of. The Warleggan Ox Driver is another air that borrows from the old English tune, the Plough Boy. Think of tunes that invoke these moods, these ancient rhythms that mark time differently.
There is a lunar eclipse on 28th October and Playford’s Emperor of the Moon immediately comes to mind. It jumps across octaves and can be played at any speed depending on the atmosphere you want to create. It is frequently paired with Bellamira.
Happy October one and all.
Tehmina Goskar
Safe to say, there was definitely a touch of that Penzance madness in the air at this week’s session. We played till gone ten-thirty with fifteen musicians, including a couple of new faces. One musician didn’t play their instrument, they just brought it to “soak up the vibes”. Too right, we should all be letting our instruments hear the tunes before we begin our assault on them, it’s much more caring.
Given the rudimentary vegetable market that sprung up mid session, eventually winning more appreciation than the music, harvest time must be here at last. Time to brush up on those harvest tunes in between collecting your crops from the garden.
Hello sessioners, welcome to August. Some of us have gone away, some have gone into hiding. But some brave souls are continuing to battle through the wind and rain to The Union on Tuesday evenings.
Lots of visitors here now, the children are free and the adults are getting a well earned change of scenery in our special town so let’s play for them and bring them some joy! Any tunes you can think of that fit into the theme of Holidays are engouraged.
I think stormy and rainy tunes will be needed this coming Tuesday as well!