Press Release
November 13 and 20th, & December 11 and 18th, 1993
Mietta’s
7 Alfred Place, Melbourne
Maireid Sullivan, John Norton, Mathew Arnold, Gary Costello, Michael Jordan, Doug deVries

Music Charms, entrances and thrills. Music, old, new & exotic, is not limited to superficial fascination. The soul reveals itself through emotional gestures in music and offers another means of expressing and celebrating aloneness and togetherness.

Boundaries between cultures are crumbling and the world has become a global village where we may venture into many fields of traditional music and come into contact with local masters to blend old and new.

This last few decades has seen musical form move through experiments and collaborations fused stylistically. We have been seeking and discovering the unfamiliar, integrating it and going the long way around to appreciate the familiar in fundamental traditions.

The aim is to ‘suss-out’ carefully the mode that has survived in a traditional form while retaining its identity and improvising a new idea in the moment of play. Thus expressing a feeling to play in a certain way that liberates the music; a contemporary idea so subtle that no matter what it is put with, the vitality of the music is enhanced.

While creative impulses assert originality, we must know the cultural ethos of the music. It must be firmly implanted so that understanding can be used to create a new idea without losing or contradicting the character of the music. The roots must be there but we should not be bound to those roots.

“Beat comes from the song” It can be sound- a motif every now and then - contributing to the musical form or it can be silence. Celtic music is spirited music which has as improvised vibrance. For this to continue it needs to maintain a fresh sense about it and, therefore, a large improvised element.

A world-wide renaissance of Celtic culture is occurring through the spread of music. People of Celtic heritage are restoring the vast mythological and philosophical richness of their ancient heritage.

Our music is dedicated to the evocative feeling and beauty of Celtic cultural concepts, music and songs, interpreted in a modern context.

The Celts were a complex Indo-European tribal high culture reaching from Asia-Minor across northern Europe. Celtic culture presented a lifestyle and philosophy conducive to the growth of personal sovereignty, romanticism and love of communication: The spirit of egalitarianism.

The travels of the Celtic people across the great oceans to the new worlds has contributed wonderful cultural collaborations in the growth of modern musical styles.

We will meet at Mietta’s on Saturday afternoons over the next two months to experiment with these ideas in an informal and friendly atmosphere. We look forward to sharing our music with you.

Maireid Sullivan
October 1993

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