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First, I have to admire the ambition of a musical group that will name its album Songs of Solstice: Volume One. Right out of the blocks, Solterre (Felicity Gerwin, Marco Zonka, Randy Mead) anticipates a long line of holiday music progeny. Given the fine execution and unusual presentation of this seasonal offering, I'm on board to hear more.

So what is so different about Volume One? Let me count the ways. The 40-minute album features just seven tracks, so the listener enjoys fully developed (on average, almost 6 minutes each) renditions of well-known traditional carols and ancient hymns. In addition, the focus is on East Indian music styles, with the tabla joining the mandolin and clarinet, but that is not the big story. Solterre includes fascinating vocals, blending Gerwing's and Zonka's voices in exotic layers of sound. Most significantly, Zonka occasionally uses "tarana," a North Indian (Hindustani) classical vocal technique used to celebrate, repeating syllables as controlled "yips." The vocals have an earthy, almost other-worldy quality. Finally, the album's artistry has a whimsical and unpredictable edge, throwing in the accordion, for example.

I enjoyed Songs of Solstice, which is nicely crafted and offbeat. Marrying European and American Christmas traditions with Eastern cultures, Solterre presents the unexpected in a pleasing, multicultural format. Cool!

--Carol Swanson
(Reviewed in 2007)

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From the liner notes:

Felicity Gerwing: octave, mandolin, accordion, vocals
Marco Zonka: tabla, tar, bendir, vocals
Randy Mead: clarinet, alto clarinet, flute

All arrangements by Marco Zonka and Felicity Gerwing

From the Website:

Where Persia, India & Europe meet..... Ancient 12th and 16th century music set to Persian rhythms with East Indian vocalizations. Completely acoustic.

Bridging ecstatic musical traditions from East and West with the traditional exuberant and evocative songs of birth and joy associated with the Paegan and Christian Winter Solstice, "Solterre" is a musical and vocal collaboration: mandolyn player and vocalist Felicity Gerwing, and percussionist and vocalist Marco Zonka, with featured woodwind player Randy Mead.

Marco Zonka began studying tabla in 1977 with the late Ustad Allah Rakha at the Indian Cultural Arts Ashram in San Francisco. He continued studies of Indian vocal and instrumental music with Ustad Ali Akbar Khan at the Ali Akbar College of music in San Rafael, and with resident tabla maestros Ustad Zakir Hussain and Pandit Swapan Chaudury. Marco plays and performs numerous finger-drumming styles, including tabla, tar, bendir, dhumbek and udu drums. Marco tours the Pacific Northwest every summer as the tabla player for Pandit Shivnath Mishra and Deobrat Mishra, sitar masters from Varanasi, India.

Felicity Gerwing is from a large family of musicians with a long history in sacred European music. She studied music at David Thompson Fine Arts University and Capilano College. She tours the Pacific Northwest every summer playing tamboura with the Mishras - the master sitarists and vocalists from Varanasi, India.

In the spirit of exuberant joy and exaltation common to all love songs to God, Solterre brings new vibrancy and spirit to these fine songs of yore, affirming and celebrating the common thread of yearning, shared by all peoples, for love and light, on the longest and darkest of nights.

About the album "Solstice" ('sun-is-still')

Astronomically, the winter solstice is the point at which the northern hemisphere of the earth, leaning away from the sun and therefore cooling with less light from the sun (creating winter) begins to "wobble" back toward the sun, creating also at that point the shortest day and longest night. "Solstice" literally means 'sun is still.'

As one of the most ancient and universal rituals of celebration on earth dating back to Egyptian, Babylonian and Sumerian times, the Winter Solstice -the darkness in which new light is born-- has been observed by cultures and civilizations all over the world. As one civilization followed another, stories associated with old myths about this time of rebirth and 'transformation' were woven into the fabric of new stories and new myths, and preexisting themes and images were retained and embellished. The Celebrations of Solstice and its 'festivals of light' are historically among the most multicultural of traditions, paralleling and cross-pollinating one another for centuries.

Always on the darkest night in a primitive place and of questionable parentage and origin, the "child of wonder", surrounded by animals and wise men, is born. From Osiris of Egypt to Attis of Rome, Apollo of the Greeks to Mithras of Persia, Deganawidah of the Huron Tribe to Jesus of Nazareth, the child of wonder, born in darkness, under the guidance of the stars and the gods, grows up to be a teacher, a leader, a healer, a god.

These songs of Solstice, resonant with the compositional integrity of ancient Britton and Celtic maestros, are given new verve by arrangements in Persian rhythms with impetuous Eastern European phrasing on Romanian Mandolin. In a North Indian vocal style known as 'tarana' a chorusing of voices common to these songs of celebration give new spirit and passion to the native elegance and grandeur of these musical gems from Medieval and Renaissance Europe.

Solterre

Songs of Solstice: Volume One

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Track List