AN ECHOES CHRISTMAS

Celebrate Christmas with the Soundscape of Echoes.
On Christmas Eve it’s An Echoes Night Before Christmas
On Christmas Day enjoy An Echoes Christmas
&
Hear An Echoes Celtic Sonic Seasonings on Demand for Free at Echoes On-Line

As a special gift to Echoes Listeners you can stream our Celtic Sonic Seasonings show with Moya Brennan and Jeff Johnson, Brian Dunning & Wendy Goodwin for FREE all day December 24 & 25

And if that’s not enough, on-line subscribers can dial up a six hour Wordless Echoes Christmas stream.  You can try it for $2.99 at Echoes On-Line.

For an Echoes Night Before Christmas hear seasonal music from Mree, Sarah McLachlan, and Camera Obscura.  We’ll hear a new Christmas song from SHEL and a guitar orchestra rendition of The Nutcracker from Stephen Bennett that is stunning. We’ll hear an electronic classic from Ralph Lundsten’s “Nordic Nature Symphony #3” and an electronic Christmas from Geigertek.

And just when you think it’s all over, end your Christmas day with An Echoes Christmas. It’s more Christmas sounds from Ólafur Arnalds, R. Carlos Nakai, Agnes Obel and more.

And for those hours when Echoes isn’t on. stream An Echoes Celtic Sonic Seasonings for free on demand all day on December 24 & 25..

I don’t know how Celtic music came to signify winter, but  slow aires and Celtic harps seem to exemplify a quieter and more atmospheric side of the Winter season.  We’ve dipped into that sound on Sonic Seasonings several times over the years and we’re doing it again.

Last week we recorded our seasonal live performance show, recording two concerts in 24 hours on opposite coasts.  You can hear them tonight on an Echoes Celtic Sonic Seasonings.

This year we have two artists returning.  On Monday afternoon, December 9, with fresh fallen snow on the ground, Moya Brennan came to the Echoes living room with her long time partner, harpist Cormac De Barra and her daughter Aisling Jarvis.  In a testament to time, I first interviewed Moya backstage at the TLA Theater in Philadelphia in 1993 when she was pregnant with Aisling.  And at the time, Moya spelled her name Máire Ní Bhraonáin.

Moya is acclaimed as the singer of Clannad, the Irish band that was part of the Celtic renaissance that began in the 1970s.  That band reformed this year for the album, Nadur, but Moya has been solo for the last 15 years.  This past year she released the album, Affinity with Cormac De Barra under the banner of Voices & Harps.  She also re-released her album, An Irish Christmas with bonus tracks.  We’ll hear this trio in a weave of harp strings and heart-rending harmonies when they play live on An Echoes Celtic Sonic Seasonings.

Immediately following Moya’s show in our southeastern Pennsylvania living room, Jeff Towne and I hopped on a flight to Seattle and the next day, December 10, we were in the home studio of keyboardist Jeff Johnson where he’d gathered his Celtic trio of flutist Brian Dunning and violinist Wendy Goodwin.
Jeff Johnson is a veteran of Celtic cross-over and devotional albums with dozens of CDs out on his own Ark Music label as well as Windham Hill and Hearts of Space Records.  Brian Dunning has been with him on many of those

recordings.  He has a connection to the early Celtic renaisance as a member of the band Nightnoise which included guitarist Mícheál Ó Domhnaill and his sister, singer and keyboardist Tríona Ní Dhomhnaill.  Mícheál, who died in 2006 had been a member of the legendary and influential Bothy Band.  They are joined by Portland-based violinist Wendy Goodwin who released her solo debut, Place of Refuge last year. Collectively, the trio released a gorgeous CD, of pastoral, ambient winter chamber works called Winterfold this past fall and it’s in the Echoes Top 25 for 2013
The trio crammed into Johnson’s studio and played beautiful arrangements of music from this album and drew from tracks that have appeared on Johnson & Dunning’s A Quiet Knowing and Under the Wonder Sky albums and a few Windham Hill collections.

So sit back and enjoy the best Christmas music you’ll hear this year; a sound that will take you out of the shopping malls and into your heart on An Echoes Celtic Sonic Seasonings streaming now for free.

And for an all-instrumental Christmas with no spoken interruptions, dial up Christmas Echoes at Echoes On-Line.  Six hours of uninterrupted non-shopping mall seasonal bliss.

John Diliberto (((echoes)))

GIVE THE GIFT OF THE ECHOES CD OF THE MONTH CLUB

Join the Echoes CD of the Month Club now and you can put David Helping and Jon Jenkins’ Found under somebodies Christmas tree.  It’s our December  CD of the Month.  You’ll get great CDs and help support Echoes at the same time.   You can do it all right here.

OR

GIVE THEM THE GIFT OF TRANSMISSIONS:
THE ECHOES LIVING ROOM CONCERTS VOLUME 19

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