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
Review by Ryanne McLaren
"Coupling the raw acoustics of the hurdy gurdy, hammered dulcimer, djembe, tambourine, and fiddle with the more polished timbres of the piano and cello, Vanhoozer conjures an ensemble-of-one that is alternately vivacious and visceral, as well as introspective and introverted."
"There is perhaps a glimmer of Narnian enchantment in these tunes as well, offering hope to the listener who, like the Pevensie children and mournful Narnians, has endured a near-hopeless winter and yearns for a return to the warmth of dancing and community."
Review by Paul Treschow
"Vanhoozer’s love for folk music combines with her extensive musical expertise to create songs that are at once free-spirited and technically precise."
"Vanhoozer states that one goal of her music is to ‘help listeners acknowledge and celebrate beauty in every day things’. Bard and Ceilidh seems to be a coming together of resources that are designed for just this purpose, from folk music celebrating sound and movement for their own sake to poems about human relationship or moments of reflection in everyday life. In doing so, Vanhoozer offers the listener an opportunity to reimagine the world in terms of the rhythms and patterns of a ceilidh dance."
Review by Kimberley Jane Anderson
"The album draws on the genre of folk music, which, with its tendency to dwell upon the virtues, traditions and comforts of the natural world, serves as an ideal vessel for these musical meditations."
"The presence of faith in the album is like the wind, too; it is never explicitly recognised, and the album has a wide appeal beyond the category of ‘religious music’, but throughout there is an enchanting sense of ‘something more’ that might catch the ear at times."
"One has the feeling that, for years to come, the work of Mary Vanhoozer has the promise to provide many more such treasures."