This is my personal favorite among my albums.
This is perhaps the project in which I've most featured my own special techniques on solo hammered dulcimer --- at least that's how it felt at the time and as I reconstruct the pieces in live settings (in the studio we usually do much more than just record solos) and the creative vision is worked out in great detail and with much joy!
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There are certain musical pieces that we personally love, and that our whole culture seems to love. Sometimes I like to consider what it is that is so lovable, then make my own arrangements with ideas from what I find.
Here’s a really clear one as an example! Today I was talking with a student about how to arrange the old Shaker tune ‘Simple Gifts,’ and I mentioned how Aaron Copland had made a theme and variations from it in section seven of his very popular orchestral Appalachian Spring Suite. (Many folks from my generation and older remember one part of it as the theme music for the weekly TV news show The Twentieth Century with Walter Cronkite.)
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On this very date in 1969 I was seventeen years old and several days into a backpacking trek at Philmont Scout Ranch in the Rocky Mountains of northern New Mexico with friends from Virginia. We’d hiked several days from Lover’s Leap to Lower Bonito to Crater Lake to Fish Camp, and now to Beaubien Camp, a beautiful mountain meadow among spruce, fir, and aspen in the classically wondrous Rockies ecosystem. As a young Eagle Scout who was a backpacker at heart, this whole experience was utterly thrilling!
...When I perform, people often ask me how long I’ve been playing the hammered dulcimer. I think they mean this question to compliment my apparent years of study, probably many, you know, to learn from teachers how to develop the appropriate virtuosity on the instrument.
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Musical phrasing and interpretation are affected by the way the instrumentalist moves. It often marks the difference between cold, dead music-making and compelling, electrifying results.
A lot of dynamic effect can be achieved with a very efficient and slight movement, as when a hammered dulcimer player uses mostly his fingers to flip the hammers in just the right way, with shoulders and elbows moving the hammers to the note locations.
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