Islands in Time by Castlebay

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(The U’n’I Coffeehouse, Springfield, MA)

“Few on the Maine coast are as adept at evoking the feeling of the region as Fred Gosbee..”

(FACE Magazine)

"excellent sense of environment, capturing the feel of coastal lands in the melody, accompaniment, and lyrics."

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

FRED GOSBEE has collected and performed folk music for over thirty years. As a child he heard his older relatives singing the old woodsmen's songs and playing fiddle and accordian. He dabbled in the viola (because his arms were long enough), and during high school he had training in standard band instruments and choir. Inspired by the folk music he heard in a college folklore class at the University of Maine with Dr. Sandy Ives, Fred took up the banjo and guitar. His interest in woodworking led him to begin designing and building guitars and a lute.

Throughout his career he has played with with a wide variety of performance groups including orchestras, marching bands and folk ensembles. As a vocalist, he has sung with madrigal groups, oratorio, musical theater, Gilbert and Sullivan and barbershop groups. Combining his theatrical experience with his knowledge of folk music, he arranged, composed, and performed incidental music for a production of A Spoon River Anthology. The resulting sound tapestry included 56 pieces of music with songs, instrumentals and new works for voices, guitars, banjo and fiddle performed live for each show. Fred has continued to write original songs in the traditional style, two of which were used in the WTBS-Atlanta/Turner Broadcasting Corp. series Portrait of America segment about Maine. His works have since been recorded by other artists and have garnered him invitations to international music festivals. He currently sings and plays classic and 12-string guitar, viola, fiddle, and woodwinds. When he is not touring, Fred Gosbee engineers and produces recordings and designs and builds Celtic harps.

JULIA LANE has loved, sung, researched and created folk music since childhood. As an adolescent, she studied music theory and took guitar lessons from a lutenist specializing in Elizabethan songs as well as flamenco. She became active in madrigal and Renaissance music groups as well as playing as a soloist and providing music for a children’s theater group. After graduating from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1974, her interest in English and Scottish folk music and lore, inspired by the literary works of J.R.R. Tolkien, led her to study in Oxford, England. She now writes music reminiscent of her Celtic ancestors and inspired by the natural world. She is currently writing a musical commemoration of the Scots-Irish survivors an 18th century shipwreck which occurred in northern Maine.

Julia Lane is a self-taught player of the "clarsach" or Celtic folk harp which she began playing in 1989. Her unique style has won three international competitions. Judge/ harpists Kim Robertson and Dennis Doyle praised her “innovative arrangements and energetic performance” and declared “she really captured the spirit of the music”. Julia Lane is also an exceptional vocalist, “one the Maine coast’s foremost voices”, whose voice has been called “lovely, vibrant”, “reminiscent of Jean Redpath”, and compared favorably with Loreena McKennitt and Judy Collins.

In addition to her own recordings, Julia has appeared as a guest artist on recordings on both sides if the Atlantic. The three videos for which she has composed and recorded soundtracks have won National Awards for Cable Excellence.

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