Album Notes

Frank Wallace, classical guitar, composer
Nancy Knowles, soprano

"In over 25 years of writing about music on recordings and in concerts, I have rarely been as captivated and enchanted by any item as this new CD from Duo LiveOak, a new - to me - ensemble established in 1976... This is a first-rate chamber music duo with a new and refreshing twist. Its artists are steeped in early music, and Wallace's songs and duets, deftly accompanied, evoke memories of our distant cultural past, ever so gently wrapped in occasional quasi-contemporary enhancements... The CD's only major drawback is its brevity, for it ends sooner than any reasonable person who hears it would wish...Go for it!"
John W. Lambert, Classical Voice North Carolina, March 2004

"Meet Frank Wallace. He composes, sings, plays a formidable classical-romantic guitar and lute, and produces exquisite-sounding recordings. And Nancy Knowles. She sings, writes poems and sometimes lyrics, makes very arty photographs, and designs promotional material. (She's also very nice...) Together, they perform as Duo LiveOak and their new CD called Woman of the Water (songs written by Frank, of course) is terrific. Their repertory spans the ages from medieval to contemporary, often featuring Wallace's own works and arrangements, which sound like what you imagine John Dowland would sound like if he were alive and writing today. Naturally, the couple live in a 1789 farmhouse in the scenic and artistic Monadnock region of New Hampshire."
Jerry Bowles, Sequenza21.com, January 2004

The "live oak" is an evergreen oak known for its strength and long life, a symbol of revitalization since ancient times. Passionate about the tonal and expressive powers of the ensemble of voices and plucked strings, Duo LiveOak is bringing new life to the long-neglected form of the art song with guitar and lute. Knowles and Wallace combine their considerable talents in composition, poetry, drama, and musical performance to create "a brilliant collection of new repertoire performed with equal amounts of grace, sensitivity and virtuosity" (Guitar Review) Their concerts have the intimacy of a poetry reading and the dramatic power of an opera. Hailed for many years on both sides of the Atlantic for their innovative concerts and recordings of medieval and renaissance music, echoes of the past reverberate throughout Duo LiveOak's new works.