Pear Tree and Partridge
Laura Hairgrove Randall and Mary Vanhoozer are Renaissance women who love to make music, engage in rich conversation, and share the gift of beauty in the everyday through a variety of creative outlets. Their shared passion have led them to Pear Tree and Partridge:
More than simply a music duo, their musical and creative collaboration also represent a way of living.
Pear Tree and Partridge is committed to crafting live music with skill, dedication, and creativity with the aim to create excellent music for the joy, enrichment, and good of their local communities. In addition to concerts, Pear Tree and Partridge also shares blogs, poetry, recipes, and pictures on their website, creating a virtual space for artistic reflection and personal rejuvenation.
Pear Tree and Partridge
Laura Hairgrove Randall and Mary Vanhoozer are Renaissance women who love to make music, engage in rich conversation, and share the gift of beauty in the everyday through a variety of creative outlets. Their shared passion have led them to Pear Tree and Partridge:
More than simply a music duo, their musical and creative collaboration also represent a way of living.
Pear Tree and Partridge is committed to crafting live music with skill, dedication, and creativity with the aim to create excellent music for the joy, enrichment, and good of their local communities. In addition to concerts, Pear Tree and Partridge also shares blogs, poetry, recipes, and pictures on their website, creating a virtual space for artistic reflection and personal rejuvenation.
Pear Tree and Partridge
Laura Hairgrove Randall and Mary Vanhoozer are Renaissance women who love to make music, engage in rich conversation, and share the gift of beauty in the everyday through a variety of creative outlets. Their shared passion have led them to Pear Tree and Partridge:
More than simply a music duo, their musical and creative collaboration also represent a way of living.
Pear Tree and Partridge is committed to crafting live music with skill, dedication, and creativity with the aim to create excellent music for the joy, enrichment, and good of their local communities. In addition to concerts, Pear Tree and Partridge also shares blogs, poetry, recipes, and pictures on their website, creating a virtual space for artistic reflection and personal rejuvenation.
Multi-instrumentalist and melodist
Angelus ad Virginem*
Mary Vanhoozer
Jan Steen’s Peasants Merrymaking Outside an Inn (previously titled Fair at Warmond).
Image courtesy of The Leiden Collection, New York.
Playford and Hilton's musical collections in Conversation: Glimpses of Times Past, Recovering Roots for New Beginnings
This album weaves together arrangements of tunes from two seminal compilations of music: John Playford's Dancing Master and John Hilton's Catch That Catch Can, demonstrating how these melodies live and move, if not in the same room, at least in the same house. While many know that Playford published The Dancing Master in 1651, perhaps it is not as common knowledge that Playford also re-published Catch That Catch Can one year after John Hilton first published his collection.
In bringing these dances and rounds into conversation with one another, we might just catch (no pun intended) further insight into these remarkable music collections themselves.
A brief note about the hurdy gurdy: while I have previously arranged some of John Hilton's tunes for hurdy gurdy, I have not yet written any hurdy gurdy arrangements of Playford melodies. This album not only provides listeners with ample opportunity to enjoy the sounds of the hurdy gurdy: it also offers what I hope to be a compelling case for including the instrument as a welcome and more established member of Playford's instrument ensemble.
About the title of the album:
As we continue finding our footing in the aftermath of COVID, we are all starting afresh in some ways. A fresh start, however, does not mean we leave the past behind us: we can still learn from it, and it can still offer us comfort, wisdom, and beauty as we forge forward.
Some of you may have caught the reference to Thomas Hardy's Under the Greenwood Tree in the title of this album. While Playford and Hilton lived many years before, perhaps Hardy heard snatches of these melodies as he mulled over his next novel, perhaps he even found them inspiring: much of his writing vividly evokes the places, colors, and beauty of times past. Music especially has a unique way of recalling memories, honouring traditions.
In some mythologies, the birch tree is symbolic of growth and new beginnings. This project invites listeners to remember that while our adventures may be new, we are not without a past, a history, and roots. We can embrace the new place in which we are planted, just like the birch tree, while also remembering and celebrating the forest from which we came.
Albums
Simon's Beard
16th and 17th Century Rounds from England
1. Come, Sing Away Boys
2. Come Follow, Follow Me
3. Come Heard Me
4. Turn Amarillis
5. A Northern Catch
6. Come Follow, Follow
7. Under This Stone
8. Under This Stone, instrumental
9. Hey Ho to the Greenwood
10. Love, Sweet Love, instrumental
11. Let Simon's Beard Alone
12. When Winter's Approach
13. Now Peace be with Old Simeon
14. Here Pleasures Are Few
15. Jenkin the Jester
Arranged and performed by Mary Vanhoozer on violin, hurdy gurdy, voice, and percussion
Dances de Noël
Christmas Carols from Europe
1. Angelus ad Virginem
2. I Saw Three Ships
3. Il est Né le Divin Enfant
4. Patapan
5. Noël Nouvelet
6. The Holly and the Ivy
7. The Truth Sent from Above
8. Angels We have Heard on High
Arranged and performed by Mary Vanhoozer on violin, hurdy gurdy, hammered dulcimer, cello, and percussion
Good Tidings to You
Christmas Classics with a Celtic Twist
1. O Come, O Come Emmanuel
2. Christmastide
3. The First Noel
4. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
5. In the Bleak Midwinter
6. O Christmas Tree
7. What Child is This
8. We Three Kings
9. Silent Night
10. Joy to the World
Arranged and performed by Mary Vanhoozer on piano and violin
Visible and Invisible
Jubilate
Original music by Mary Vanhoozer
1. Highbury Social
2. All Things New
3. Golden Haze
4. Snow on Snow
5. Loch Maree
6. The Pheasant and the Fox
7. Ode to Autumn
8. Wedding Scottish
9. Squirrel's Whirl
10. Strawberry Picking
11. Greyfriars Bobby
12. King's Festal Hall
13. Visible and Invisible
14. Zephyrus
Performed and arranged by Mary Vanhoozer on violin, hurdy gurdy, hammered dulcimer, cello, and percussion
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Original Music and Lyrics by
Mary Vanhoozer
1. Joyful Noise
2. The Seahorse
3. Mama in the Mornin'
4. A Missing Piece
5. The Troubadours
6. Glowing Embers
7. The Whiskered Owl
8. Turkish Delight
9. Brisk Morning
10. Harvest Moon
11. The Sandman's Sailboat
12. Jubilate Deo
13. Goodnight Moon
14. Water Nymphs/The Merry Wood
Performed and arranged by Mary Vanhoozer on violin, hurdy gurdy, hammered dulcimer, cello, piano, vocals and percussion
Bard and Ceilidh
Original Music by Mary Vanhoozer
Lyrics based on classic poetry
1. Riverside Ceilidh
2. Fairie Caper
3. Excelsior *^
4. Mother of Mine ^
5. Lullabying the Sun
6. Whose Woods are These
7. Little One, Sleep ^
8. Daisy Chains
* Laudon Schuett, lute
^ Robert Nicholson, cello
From Leipzig to LA
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Pianist Mary Vanhoozer plays the complete keyboard partitas of J. S. Bach and Partita Picosa by Josh Rodriguez
CD 1
Partita No. 1, BWV 825
Partita Picosa
Partita No. 2, BWV 826
CD 2
Partita No. 3, BWV 827
Partita No. 4, BWV 828
CD 3
Partita No. 5, BWV 829
Partita No. 6, BWV 830
Songs of Day and Night
Original Music by
Mary Vanhoozer
1. Uphill*
2. Bed in Summer*
3. I Shall not Live in Vain*
4. I Shot an Arrow*
5. Dona Nobis Pacem
6. Who has Seen the Wind?*
7. Shepherd's Song
8. The Tide Rises*
9. When Icicles Hang by the Wall*
10. Wynken, Blynken, and Nod*
*Lyrics based on classic poetry