This Weekend: An Inventive Look at Irish Music with NYC duo

Violinist Dana Lyn and Guitarist Kyle Sanna to perform in Claremont and Cornish

New York City’s Dana Lyn, violin and Kyle Sanna, guitar perform their “through the looking glass” approach to traditional Irish music this weekend “The Coral Suite” in the Upper Valley. Performances will be held at the West Claremont Center for Music and the Arts on Saturday August 4th at 6:30pm, and at Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site on Sunday August 5th at 2pm in honor of Larry Nowlan, Jr.

Also coming up: Wednesday 8/8: Bassel and the Supernatural, Friday 8/10: Kinan Azmeh and Dinuk Wijeratne

Hailed as “ground-breaking” by noted folklorist and NEA Award-recipient Mick Moloney and “bursting with creativity” by renowned fiddler Kevin Burke, Dana Lyn and Kyle Sanna connect the dots between their experience as composers and improvisers in New York City’s rich musical community and their deep admiration for traditional Irish music. The duo has collaborated with some of the greatest living interpreters of Irish music, including Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill, Cillian Vallely, Kevin Burke, and Mick McAuley.

Lyn and Sanna have brought their inventive arrangements and nuanced interpretations of traditional music to clubs, festival stages and concert halls throughout the US and Canada. They have taught workshops at the Old Songs Festival, the Catskills Irish Arts Festival, the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival, Wellesley College, West Virginia’s Augusta Heritage Center, Traditional Arts in Upstate New York, and since 2015 have been residents at the Avaloch Farm Music Institute in Boscawen, NH.

Their second album, “The Great Arc”, is inspired by and concerned with extinct and endangered animal species. The Irish Echo hailed it as “a deep musical work full of lavish, evocative textures” and the Dublin-based Grammy-winning singer Susan McKeown called it “sublime”.

Picking up where their last album “The Great Arc” left off, Lyn and Sanna continue their investigation of environmental fragility with “The Coral Suite”: an evocative sequence of Irish tunes that mirrors the life cycles and natural processes that occur within coral reef ecosystems. With the rich vocabulary of Irish melody, and with light boxes featuring Dana Lyn’s artwork, Lyn and Sanna create an audiovisual poem for the reef, paying tribute to its miraculous biodiversity while calling attention to the urgent need for its protection. WCCMA and Saint-Gaudens Memorial are pleased to offer this project as a “Two Day” music experience, with a unique and varied audience experience at each location by the same outstanding musicians.

The performance at Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site is dedicated to Lawrence J. “Larry” Nowlan, Jr (1965-2013). Larry’s love of the ocean and his passion for human creativity in all media is well-expressed in “The Coral Suite”. Come and remember the sculptural legacy and the humanity of a man known to many in the Upper Valley. Sunday’s performance at the park is free with park admission, and a part of the weekly summer music series provided by the Saint-Gaudens Memorial in partnership with the National Park Service. For more information visit sgnhs.org and nps.gov/saga

Saturday’s performance is a part of WCCMA’s Summer Concert Series at Union Church, a music series committed to barriers free access to great music. Admission is by donation. For more information about WCCMA visit wcc-ma.org.

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