Five musicians who put their own spin on traditional Celtic tunes will showcase their craft in Okotoks this weekend.
Edmonton quintet Celtara performs its arrangements of traditional and original Canadian Celtic music with its eclectic repertoires influenced by Celtic music from the Ireland, Scotland, Denmark, Norway and beyond at the Rotary Performing Arts Centre March 9 at 7:30 p.m.
“With traditional folk music there isn’t much arrangement to it,” said Celtara percussionist Mark Arnison. “We craft arrangements and make it more interesting to listen to so there’s more texture and colour. We do a lot of instrument switching between tunes to try and make it a journey rather than just jigs and reels and listening to the same thing all over again.”
Arnison said Celtara’s repertoire is split pretty evenly between songs and instrumental tunes.
“We have traditional instrumentation in that it’s acoustic music for the most part with the fiddle, accordion, guitar, flute, percussions and vocals,” he said. “We do some writing ourselves and we also take traditional music written by other people and craft in our own arrangements.”
Celtara frequents folk clubs and soft-seat venues, capturing its audience with stories about some of the songs.
“People really like the stories behind the songs like where they came from and what it means,” he said. “Especially if it’s traditional lyrics they’re not always easily understood in today’s context. Sometimes a little explanation helps pinpoint what it’s all about.”
The quartet consists of Arnison on percussion; Steven Bell on piano, accordion and vocals; Bonnie Gregory on fiddle, harp and vocals; Andreas Illig on guitar and bouzouki; and Tami Cooper on flute and vocals.
“We’ve all gotten into it different ways,” said Arnison. “Our guitar player from Germany lived in Ireland for a year and absolutely loves this kind of music. Our fiddle player Bonnie teaches fiddling and a variety of music and she just has this encyclopedic collection of tunes in her head that comes out.”
It was Cooper who introduced Arnison, who’s part Irish and has a background in classical music, to Celtic music.
“In classical music you’re reading off a page, but this is much more by ear and improvisational in many ways,” he said. “They’re very infectious tunes and once you learn what they’re all about they’re just a lot of fun to play.”
Upon learning the traditional tunes, Arnison liked that he could craft it the way he wanted.
“It’s all learned by ear,” he said. “You sit down with a group of people and learn how to play the music together. It’s a very social kind of music. When you learn these tunes you learn a particular version and there are many version out there. They may have come from the same source but they’ve gone through different histories as different groups of people have learned them.”
Celtara developed its own version of the traditional tunes and has been capturing Canadian audiences for 15 years.
“No other group we know of does it in the same way,” Arnison said. “We started out with fairly traditional Celtic and started gathering influences from Scandinavia, particularly. It’s a lot of fun to start to explore and bring those things into our repertoire. It’s outside of what would be traditionally English and Irish and Scottish kinds of music.”
Tickets to see Celtara cost $25 in advance or $30 at the door and can be purchased at Okotoks.ca, the Okotoks Art Gallery or by calling 403-938-3204.
