"A CELTIC CHRISTMAS"
George Balderose - Smallpipes & Great Highland Pipes
Ernie Hawkins - Guitar
L.E. McCullough - Tinwhistle, Harmonica, Bones & Bodhran
T.H. Gillespie - Keyboard
Four top traditional musicians blend their talents to produce a unique recording of Christmas standards and Irish-Scots folk favorites. The result - a warm, gentle garland of Yuletide and Celtic tunes guaranteed to drive the winter chill from your door!
"A LOT of CDs promise Celtic, but few deliver such an authentic and enchanting experience as A Celtic Christmas. The rich acoustic textures and pleasant musicality of these arrangements quickly warmed me up to the virtues of this record.
"Featuring a tremendously talented group of contemporary folk musicians, A Celtic Christmas resonates with the sounds of the British Isles. George Balderose's fine work on bagpipes lays down the Scottish base for a catchy instrumental quartet. L.E. McCullough contributes a hint of Irish spring with his tin whistle. T.H. Gillespie adds beautifully traditional percussive sensibilities, and Ernie Hawkins knits these brilliant threads into a beautiful Celtic fabric with his strong, but relatively understated work on guitar.
"I particularly liked the sound of The First Noel/Joy to the World medley and thought their arrangement of Auld Lang Syne, which featured the instrument and mood of each musician in turn, was appropriately sentimental for ringing in a new millennium. An evocative and pleasurable experience."
- Richard Banks, ChristmasReviews.com
** PERFORMER BIOS **
Ernie Hawkins is one of the true modern masters of the ragtime and country blues guitar, personally learning from blues greats Rev. Gary Davis, Son House, Fred McDowell, Skip James, Bukka White, Mance Lipscomb and others. He performs in festivals and concerts throughout Europe, Asia and North America and has shared stages with top blues performers from John Hammond and John Lee Hooker to Keb Mo, Bonnie Raitt and Maria Muldaur. Ernie's newly-released instructional videos on Lightnin' Hopkins, Blind Willie McTell, Mance Lipscomb and Rev. Gary Davis (Stefan Grossman's Guitar Workshop) have garnered international acclaim. Contact: htttp://www.erniehawkins.com
George Balderose was called "the Segovia of bagpipes" by the New Yorker and cited by the New York Times as having a "virtuoso's gift". He holds the degree of Senior Piper from the Glasgow, Scotland, College of Piping and has performed as a soloist for Prince Charles of England, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Carnegie Hall in New York. George operates a dozen bagpipe camps (Balmoral School of Piping) throughout the U.S. and Canada, coming in contact with thousands of piping devotees a year and performs nationally with the music/dance quintet Road to the Isles. Contact: http://www.pittsburghpiper.com
L.E. McCullough is an internationally-recognized performer, scholar, composer and producer of Irish and Celtic music who has won numerous music prizes in Ireland and America. A pioneering exponent of the "Celtic World Beat" genre, he has recorded with Irish, French, Cajun, Latin, blues, jazz, country, bluegrass and rock ensembles on 43 albums for Sony, Warner Brothers, RCA, Laserlight, Kicking Mule, Rounder and Bluezette. He is the author of several instructional books and audio/video tapes - The Complete Irish Tinwhistle Tutor and The Complete Irish Tunebook (Music Sales), Favorite Irish Session Tunes (Homespun), St. Patrick Was a Cajun (Ossian) and the Learn to Play Irish Tinwhistle video (Homespun); his most recent "gigs" have included performing on the Oscar-winning soundtrack of the film Michael Collins, the PBS television series The West, Lewis and Clark and Not For Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony and Jay Ungar & Molly Mason's The Lovers' Waltz on Angel/EMI. Contact: htttp://feadaniste.tripod.com
T.H. Gillespie is an ordained Baptist minister who plays a regular circuit of churches and campuses, electrifying audiences with a savvy blend of rock, jazz, classical, folk and British Isles music. A talented multi-instrumentalist on piano, MIDI keyboards, guitar, bass and percussion, he landed his first record contract while studying at Indiana University, a jazz-rock-gospel album that won him critical recognition as "the freshest creative voice in gospel music". After earning his Master of Divinity degree at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, T.H. moved to Indianapolis where he freelances as a speaker/performer at conferences, festivals and churches and operates a music teaching and MIDI-studio business. Along with L.E. McCullough he has co-composed three Celtic Ballet Suites for Dance Kaleidoscope heard on the Ethos Records CD, Myths for a New Millennium. Contact: thgilles@msn.com
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