Sat 4 Oct: Moira Smiley from the US in Bath | Singing workshop | Rhizome concert with Rolling Harmony
We are thrilled to host Moira Smiley from the US for the first time in Bath.
This is a fabulous opportunity to sing with Moira in a rare UK singing workshop. Moira’s original compositions, choral arrangements, and folk music are being sung by millions of voices around the world today.
“An impeccable musician, gracious, collaborative, kind and open”
In a special collaboration, the evening concert will feature songs from Moira’s Rhizome Project album, performed with a string quartetandRolling Harmony vocal ensemble.
2:30 – 5:30pm Singing workshop with Moira Smiley
7:30 – 9:30pm Moira Smiley, Rhizome Quartet and Rolling Harmony in concert Doors open 7pm
There are many great places to eat between the workshop and concert, within a few minutes walk.
Singer, composer, and song-collector Moira Smiley has sung in arenas, cathedrals, kitchens, back porches, sound stages, and on glaciers.She has performed with the likes of Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Tune-Yards, Tim O’Brien, Eric Whitacre, Los Angeles Master Chorale, New World Symphony, Solas, and The Lyris String Quartet.
Moira has led vocal workshops and residencies at countless universities, colleges, high schools, conservatories, and musical organizationsincluding the LA Master Chorale, Savannah Acoustic Music Seminar, Vancouver Youth Choir, Yale, and Oxford. Moira’s academic specialty is Early Music, and she has developed parallel experience with various folk traditions – especially early American, Irish, and Balkan vocal styles. By exploring the particularities of traditions, styles, and periods, she’s found something uniquely her own.
Moira continues to develop new experiences for singers, and is excited by the opportunity to share music with singers of all experience levels.
She is regularly commissioned to write large-scale choral & chamber music works, with millions singing her choral music around the world.Moira has been featured in TED conferences, on BBC Radio and TV, NPR, ABC Australia, and live at countless venues from Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall to Walt Disney Concert Hall and Royal Festival Hall. Smiley is known for enchanting audiences whether on stage, atop glaciers, inside ships or in cozy kitchens from Norway to Tasmania.
The Rhizome Project
“If this recording were a wine, I might describe it as having notes of old forest and island sand with a deep body of hiraeth, legs that extend through the glass and entangle themselves in the bookshelves of your childhood.” – Debora Ewing, Folkworks
Moira writes:
An album, a collection, a bundle, a root system, a packet of seeds, a rhizome…
Making a music album — maybe especially in an era when most of us listen to singles, playlists and fragments — can invite a listener into a collection of ideas or feelings that make more sense when gathered together. Curating an album of folk songs that ‘formed me’ helps me make sense of the new sounds I create today. Gathering these songs, these stories and these pictures helps me know why certain songs (and people) keep nurturing and challenging me across decades — allowing me to remain a ‘resonant reed’.
I feel very lucky to have grown up with a sense of songs as shared treasures, like stones, shells, leaves and other tiny things gathered on a walk to share later with others. In the album’s accompanying book (The Rhizome Song Stories) are highly subjective, personal stories of one musician’s way of making sense of the world. This book accompanies The Rhizome Project album, but I also believe it can travel solo.
Several of the songs in The Rhizome Project were the first songs to allow me the confidence to sing alone, while others outlined elemental ethics that my little voice could grow into. I remember realizing sometime around age 10 that I belonged to generations of little voices raised bravely and plainly – close to the natural world, and singing in spite of our insignificance. Therefore, songs raising a hand of protest also reminded me to catch wonder and awe in the other hand.
I am a worker bee for music, an introvert and dreamer who travels to make my living. One of the lessons of being in my forties is how deeply shaped I am by the landscape and people I come home to. I look to certain neighbors and friends to remind me of the myriad creative and practical ways to be human – right here, right now, in all the mess, the ordinary, painful and precious.
The Rhizome Project celebrates all the powerful ways we are connected, though, like the rhizome roots, those connections may be hidden or forgotten.
About Rolling Harmony
Rolling Harmony is a vocal ensemble from the South West of England, blending a unique combination of artistic and vocal experience. We perform a diverse programme of music rooted in English and American harmony singing traditions, thriving on songs with sparkling lyrics, tight rhythms, and thrilling harmonies.
Rolling Harmony is continually evolving as an ensemble, exploring new repertoire and vocal styles, and collaborating with other performers.Formed by Jane Harris, Director of Songways in Bath, we bring together singers from Bath, Bradford on Avon, Shaftesbury and Taunton, united by a passion for vocal harmony and a love of performing. We are delighted to be collaborating with Moira for the first time
