Emilyn: press
LYONS WOMEN IN BUSINESS
Musician Emilyn Inglis has been a performer and teacher for much of her life, but this September she took it to a new level and made teaching music in Lyons a business. Inglis is a gifted musician who plays seven instruments and offers lessons in voice, piano and guitar. Her love of music comes naturally and she gives credit to teachers and her family.
Inglis spent the first part of her life in Philadelphia, surrounded by a family that loved music. Classical and folk music were ever present with a father who played numerous instruments and a mother who was a singer and guitar player. Inglis fondly remembers family and friends together with everyone singing or playing an instrument.
Inglis began formal musical training when she was seven and eventually worked her way to the prestigious Oberlin Music Conservatory, in Ohio.
Inglis refers to an Ansel Adams quote, “I believe the approach of the artist and the environmentalist are fairly close in that both are, to a rather impressive degree, concerned with the affirmation of life.” Inglis adds “teacher” to this list, and thus she falls into all three categories.
Her passion for music is intertwined with a goal for seeing the world a better place. Teaching is one way she contributes to this goal. Inglis believes that when someone learns to play music (instruments or voice) it allows them to develop creativity, expression and ultimately confidence. It is Inglis’ hope that given a musical skill and confidence, a student can than go out and touch the lives of others in a positive way.
As a teacher, Inglis feels strongly about making the learning process a positive one. “One adult student told me her choir teacher told her to ‘just mouth the words, rather than sing,’ and she has carried that with her into adulthood.”
Inglis is very happy with the response she’s gotten to teaching music here in Lyons. In the short time she has been open, she has acquired more than 20 students. Students range in age and ability and some of them drive from as far away as Estes Park and Boulder to study with Inglis.
In addition to teaching music, Inglis is a student of music who continues to challenge herself. She is a member of Ars Nova Singers, an a cappella group singing music from the Renaissance and contemporary composers. The 40 members of Ars Nova come from around the front range. Some are composers and others are music teachers, but all are gifted singers who must audition for a spot in the choir.
With her voice as an instrument, Inglis enjoys the challenges of performing folk music and also Baroque or Renaissance. The body must create sound in different ways for different types of music. Ars Nova gives Inglis the skill to perform with diversity. Inglis, along with three other Ars Nova members, will perform Saturday, Nov. 10 at the Lyons United Methodist Church. “Voices of the Golden Age, Love, Drinking, Singing and Sex: Pleasure of the Seventeenth Century.” The music of Claudio Monteverdi and Henry Purcell will be featured along with unpublished drinking songs from the Baroque. For more information on this event, visit www.backbeatconcerts.com.
For more information on Inglis’ performance schedule or voice, guitar or piano lessons visit www.emilynsmusic.com.
A CHRISTMAS PRESENCE
BOULDER — The Ars Nova Singers' annual Christmas concerts have become a not-to-miss tradition among audiences seeking unusual, little-heard holiday music far from the overplayed tunes on television commercials and mall soundtracks.
Each season, the ensemble's artistic director, Thomas Edward Morgan, assembles a fresh, fascinating yule program that transports listeners around the world and centuries back in time.
This year, he has done himself proud again, with a diverse, appealing lineup beginning with medieval and Renaissance selections and ending in the musical present.
As usual, Thursday evening's concert, in the fetching setting of St. John's Episcopal Church, managed to be at once exotic and mysterious, moving and festive.
It opened with the evening's most obscure selections, some of the earliest English carols. Highlights included an intimate, transparent trio version of Walter Frye's 15th-century "Ave Regina Caelorum" and a lovely small-ensemble take on Robert Parsons' "Ave Maria."
Closer to our time were a trio of 20th-century Slavic works, arguably the heart of the concert. Here, all the qualities long associated with Ars Nova could be heard to rich advantage — flawless intonation, exacting precision and nuanced dynamics.
The set opened with Pavel Chesnokov's "Salvation Is Created," with the 36-voice choir's sublimely hushed realization of the lingering conclusion. It ended with Krzysztof Penderecki's "Song of Cherubim," a haunting, ultra-complex 1986 work that sounded strangely medieval, bringing the first half full circle.
"Byla Cesta," a folk-flavored Moravian carol, began the second half, with three fine soloists — sopranos Shannon Johnson and Karen Ramirez and countertenor Robert Sussuma — backed by an all-female ensemble.
Next came an unexpected pairing of surprisingly well-matched antiphons by two contemporary composers from opposite sides of the world, one world-famous, the other known locally — Arvo Pärt of Estonia and R. Anthony Lee of Boulder.
The evening ended suitably on a lighter note, with Morgan's handsome new arrangement of "O Little Town of Bethlehem," featuring stunning solo work by soprano Tana Cochran, and two other favorites as encores.
There are two more opportunities to hear this program this weekend. Tickets are still available, but be aware that these concerts typically sell out.
"InnerLight: Christmas With Ars Nova"
An unconventional holiday program by the 36-voice a cappella ensemble. 7:30 p.m. today, St. Elizabeth's Church, Auraria campus; 2:30 p.m. Sunday, St. John's Episcopal Church, 1419 Pine St., Boulder. $20, $16 seniors and $12 students. 303-499-3165 or arsnovasingers.org. 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Stanley Hotel, Estes Park. Donations will be accepted. Proceeds benefit the Estes Park Performing Arts Center. 970-481-6142 or estesparktheater.com.
THOSE WERE THE DAYS--LYONS FOLK PRIESTESS OFFERS MUSICAL TONIC FOR POST-MELLENNIAL MALAISE
So I met the Lyons-based folk chanteuse Emilyn at the Outlaw bar (in Lyons), where she modestly walked in one winter night clutching her guitar case.
It was Wednesday open-mike night, where patrons gathered for bright lights, cold beer and the stellar honky-tonk music served up by the Robyn Pollard and the Redstone Racket Club house band.
Her timing was right, as after applauding the regular male pickers and singers doing their best Merle Haggard and Charley Pride covers, I was ready for the sultry sweet-talking of a female voice.
In my beer-induced haze, I summoned images of a 27-year-old Emilyn as a younger Emmylou Harris in a smoke-filled Washington D.C. bar in 1971, the night Harris was discovered by country trailblazer Gram Parsons.
After chatting with Emilyn later that night, she handed me a just-released CD entitled “Some Lone Valley,” and I promised I’d write her a review.
That was a year ago, and while I’m a little late, I must say that it’s taken me this long to digest her album, which unexpectedly expanded what I thought was my already wide musical attention span.
First off, I was wrong to peg Emilyn as a country singer in the mold of Loretta Lynn, because she radiates more in the spiritual etherealness of 1960s artists like the British Mary Hopkins and Donovan and the American Joan Baez.
Emilyn especially reminds me of Hopkins, who was one of the first artists signed to The Beatles' Apple Records in 1969, where she recorded the classic album “Post Card,” containing the international hit “Those Were the Days.”
Like Hopkins, who commanded any attentive soul’s attention with child-like musings about life’s canonical meanings, Emilyn songs, most of which pre-date the 20th century, take the listener back to simpler times, with songs bred of natural beauty and archetypical human desires.
With Emilyn’s soaring soprano and masterful phrasing, one envisions a more pure and serene society - one less complacent with unimportant matters and plagued by the emptiness of cell phones, NASCAR, suburban sprawl, Internet pornography and fast food.
Emilyn’s Nordic ballads and Appalachian song poems are the perfect potion for tuning out modern society’s ills.
Her re-interpreted tunes about communal longings and agrarian concerns might become more relevant, as an end to cheap oil and global warming force modern societies to become more localized (see “The Long Emergency” by James Kunstler). In a future of environmental and economic disaster-based entropy, it’s not hard to foresee the acoustic guitar and flute sounds on “Some Lone Valley” outliving the Stratocaster-based garage bands of today.
From universal topics of boy versus girl struggles in, “Johnny be fair,” to Civil War era ballads on lost love in the haunting, “Maggie,” Emilyn has the gift of timeless transcendence.
Emilyn plays virtually all the instruments on all the songs, which venture from a Scottish ballad warning of an adulterous couple's descent into hell, to an ode to the majestic Colorado mountains. Emilyn’s great-grandmother penned the latter track, “Autumn in the Rockies,” on her first visit to Allenspark in the late 1930s, capturing the beauty and isolation of mountain life.
Emilyn’s music might be hard to package to the myspace generation - it’s not the latest alt-country with revved-up indy rock inflections (ala Neko Case) - but it will instill wonder in those looking for something deeper.
Just as Paul McCartney discovered the young Mary Hopkins amidst the British folk club scene in 1969, hopefully some knight (or noble) will discover Emilyn, enabling her to be heard by more ears yearning for timeless beauty in music.
Out of this world vocals - last show May 19
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Contributed by: William Autrey on 5/19/2007
I just saw the Ars Nova Singers for the first time tonight and I am speechless! They are an amazing choral group singing amazing stuff. "New Sounds" is the name of the show and they certainly deliver on it! One of the more amazing moments was in the second half when they performed a selection of Americana works. " Calling My Children Home" was introduced as a piece written for Emmy Lou Harris, but as done by a 40 voice choir it was so poingnant and filled with emotional yearning that I was moved to tears.
Other highlights of this magical and splendid evening was the " Agnus Dei" by Samuel Barber, " Eyesight" by Stephen Stucky, " Pretty Saro" (a solo by the enchanting Emilyn Inglis), and " Sister Maude" a new composition by Colorado composer Cherise Leiter, who I've never heard of but ought to be writing more music by the likes of this.
They're final show is tonight (Sat, May 19) in Denver at the St. Elizabeth's Church near UCD ( 1060 St. Francis Way) at 7:30. They sell tickets at the door.
Do yourself a favor and catch this amazing chorus tonight! I was certainly glad a friend of mine coaxed me into going (thank you, thank you, thank you Pat!). In these uncertain times it certainly was an uplift for my soul. Thank you Ars Nova!!!!
LYONS--A BLUEGRASS PLAYGROUND
K.C. Groves was hosting a Christmas party when December's first big blizzard slammed her hometown of Lyons.
Groves, a celebrated bluegrass musician who plays in the supergroup Uncle Earl, barely made it back from a Whole Foods run in Boulder. She was sure her party's turnout would be in the single digits - just like the temperature outside.
"But sure enough, all of these people who lived in Lyons snowshoed and skied over to the liquor store two blocks away and then came over to my house," she recalled. "People started playing music, and at one point there were two different jam sessions going on.
"Toward the end of the night, someone made a toast: 'Hey, this is a pretty cool place to live."'
The Song School at the Planet Bluegrass Ranch in Lyons draws musical visitors to the town every summer. Song School student Molly Venter of Austin, Texas, composes a song along the banks of the St. Vrain River during an excercise to create a song in 45 minutes. (Post / Cyrus McCrimmon)
It is indeed, especially if you play bluegrass music.
In the past decade, Lyons has emerged as the great bluegrass mecca of the West. Not only is the small town, population 1,600, home to roots-music giant Planet Bluegrass, producer of the Telluride Bluegrass Festival and other events, it is also the place that countless bluegrass musicians call home.
"Lyons used to be the best kept secret in all of Colorado - in all of bluegrass, too," said Sally Van Meter, a Grammy-winning slide guitar player who has lived in the small mountain community 25 minutes north of Boulder for nine years. "But in the last year or two, a lot more artists and musicians have found themselves here."
The mass gathering of artists makes sense. Lyons is a charming town where everyone runs into neighbors at the coffee shop and the post office, since there is no home mail delivery. It lacks a major grocery store, but that's the way some residents prefer it. Boulder is less than a 30-minute drive.
While property values in Lyons are certainly trending up, it is nowhere near as expensive as Boulder. And you can't beat the natural beauty of Lyons, which is nestled among scenic red cliffs, sprawling river basins and
Spring Creek Bluegrass Band (Jessica Smith on bass, Alex Johnstone on mandolin, Taylor Sims on guitar and Chris Elliott on banjo) rehearse in the kitchen in a home in Lyons, the bluegrass mecca of the West. (Post / Cyrus McCrimmon)
tree-freckled foothills that dominate the land 20 miles east of Rocky Mountain National Park.
Artists drawing artists
As rich a draw as Lyons is aesthetically, its artistic residents are steadily becoming the reason so many people are moving this direction.
"We knew about Lyons and RockyGrass," said Taylor Sims, singer-guitarist with Spring Creek Bluegrass Band. "We'd been here before, and we knew that it was a cool little town - and that was part of the reason we chose to move here."
Spring Creek Bluegrass Band formed in the Gunnison valley in 2004, but the quartet left Colorado a year later to study under bluegrass legends Joe Carr and Alan Munde in Texas. When the time came to move
Legendary resonating guitar player Sally Van Meter travels the world for her music but calls Lyons home. (Post / Cyrus McCrimmon)
back to Colorado, the band's decision of where to live was made easier by friends who were talking up life in Lyons.
"It's turned out to be better than we could have ever imagined," Sims said. "If somebody ever needs a guitar player, they can call me up or they can call a bunch of other people up. There's a lot of camaraderie, and we all share common interests. It also helps that we all play music."
Life in Lyons is unlike life in most other towns. There are the impromptu porch jams that take place any old afternoon or evening in houses all over town. There are the planned picking jams, which often go late into the morning hours, reminding surrounding neighbors of their town's talented residents.
There's
Students at The Song School at the Planet Bluegrass Ranch in Lyons stretch before rehearsing. Lyons has become the bluegrass/folk capital of the West. (Post / Cyrus McCrimmon)
also the Tuesday-night jam at Oskar Blues, which now attracts up to 60 or 70 pickers, according to manager Scott Waller. And there's the Thursday-night bluegrass concerts at Oskar, which are gaining a regular audience.
"There are plenty of touring acts we could bring in on Thursdays to play," said Waller, who has worked at Oskar for six years. "But it's almost bigger when we keep it in house using local musicians."
There's also the High Street Concerts series, which regularly sells out Rogers Hall, in addition to other local shows and series. And then there's the big daddy, RockyGrass, which sold out the expansive Planet Bluegrass Ranch from July 27-29 with headliners such as Nickel Creek, the Sam Bush Bluegrass Band
Craig Ferguson, founder and director of Planet Bluegrass since 1991. (Post / Cyrus McCrimmon)
and the Del McCoury Band.
That's 4,000-plus people per day - in tiny Lyons.
"I hadn't noticed the influx of musicians living here until someone mentioned it not long ago," said Craig Ferguson, the director of the Lyons-based Planet Bluegrass who started producing festivals there in 1991. "But now I look at it, and it's really clear that they're here - and it's not just bluegrass or folk artists. There's just a lot of musicians in this town.
"I don't know when it happened. It was a sleepy, little town when we showed up. I'm not gonna use the term redneck, but it was a quarry town. But now there are sculptures all over Main Street and some poets living here - it's a diverse arts community, and I guess one brings the other."
New venue opening
When Ferguson and his partners bought the 20 acres of land that is now the Planet Bluegrass Ranch for $500,000 in the early 1990s, they struggled to make it happen. He now recognizes the deal as a steal, and the organization is happy to be unveiling its latest Lyons venue, the Wildflower Pavilion, with a Tim O'Brien show on Sept. 7.
"Between all the festivals and the concert series and the shows at Oskar, there are plenty of great gigs here in Lyons," said Brian Eyster, a musician who makes his living as the marketing director at Planet Bluegrass. "But more than anything, Lyons is the place where we all come home to and talk about music."
Planet Bluegrass is one of the biggest names in bluegrass, and its connection to Lyons has not gone unnoticed. When Eyster was in Nashville in 2006 for his first International Bluegrass Music Association conference, he had his small-talk, where-are-you-from spiel cued up and ready to go.
"I was prepared to tell everyone, 'I'm from Lyons - that's 25 minutes north of Boulder,' but I actually didn't have to tell people. They knew where it is," Eyster said. "You tell people you're from Lyons, and they immediately know Planet Bluegrass, and it seems like everybody in the industry knows somebody who has just moved here. And that's kind of funny, because Lyons is a tiny town."
Banjo songstress Abigail Washburn plays in numerous bands and incarnations, one of which is with Groves in Uncle Earl, whose last record, "Waterloo, Tennessee," was produced by former Led Zeppelin bass player John Paul Jones. While Washburn lives in Nashville, she has spent plenty of time in Lyons - once even jamming with Jones, Nickel Creek mandolin player Chris Thile and her Earl buddies at Rocky-Grass - and she's proud of her bandmate for helping foster such an intimate and involved scene.
"I'm really proud to know K.C., because she's been a big part of encouraging people to move out there," Washburn said. "I've talked with a lot of people who said, 'K.C. told me to move here.' And it's so great that so many people have. ... Some bands have formed just because that town exists. Every time I'm there, I feel full of life - because of the sunshine and the people playing music and the small town of people knowing everyone's names."
Funky political stew
Groves is unofficially known as Lyons' bluegrass hostess. She started the High Street Concert series and eventually passed it on to Eyster. And when she's not touring or recording, she hosts the Tuesday-night bluegrass jam at Oskar Blues.
"Most of the musicians here have a road life and play gigs in Boulder and Denver, and as a result, everybody is really supportive of each other - K.C. in particular," said Eyster. "When a new musician moves into town, she's always the first person to know, because having another bass player in town means more possible jams."
Groves landed in Lyons around 2000, and as she has helped build the community around her, certain realities have emerged.
"It is definitely getting more expensive to live here, but it's still not outrageous," she said. "It's not Boulder at all. But there is this dichotomy for people, where you'll have a car up on blocks next to a house with Buddhist flags. People live together, for the most part, amicably. Sometimes, with the politics, it gets a little funky. It's all about the old Lyons crowd, with our back porches and our instruments, meeting the new Lyons crowd, with their Gore-Tex baby strollers."
The growth has been both good and bad for Ferguson's Planet Bluegrass, which faces complaints about the stress his festivals - including this weekend's Folks Festival - bring to the small community.
"The consistent drag is the politics," Ferguson said. "There's the complaints about the parking and the people and the petty stuff, and we have to deal with all that on a political level. But now with all of these artists living here, I don't even know if I've ever enjoyed the political support of a community as I do now. It has swung completely with the artists moving in."
Van Meter remains irked about a city council squabble that resulted in Lyons not getting a larger grocery store, but other than that, she couldn't be happier. Talking last week from her front porch, where she can see the town's three church steeples, Van Meter was awaiting her friend Jason Dilg, who was coming up from Boulder to play some old-time music with Van Meter under the stars.
"Within the last three or four years, it just seemed like everybody was looking for a house to move into up here," Van Meter said. "It's really become this tight community of people who knew that being able to live within a community of musicians is really kind of rare.
"It's like the East Village of New York, when all the poets were living there in the '60s. It almost has that feel because of this great connection we all have."
Pop music critic Ricardo Baca can be reached at 303-954-1394 or rbaca@denverpost.com.
Folks Festival
FOLK, POP|Planet Bluegrass Ranch, Lyons; 10 a.m.-10:30 p.m. today featuring acts including Chris Isaak, Richie Havens, Cheryl Wheeler, Peter Himmelman, Serena Rider, Guggenheim Grotto and others|$45|bluegrass.com, 303-823-0848
Lyons is home to countless talented bluegrass artists. Here are five of them.
* Sally Van Meter: Whether she was living in San Francisco, Boulder or Lyons, Van Meter always leaves a mark on her surroundings. She's played with everyone from Jerry Garcia to the Yonder Mountain String Band, and her work on "The Great Dobro Sessions" as a featured performer helped the recording win a Grammy.
* K.C. Groves: A talented solo performer and also a part of the supergroup Uncle Earl, Groves is also quite the organizer. She created the High Street Concert series, hosts the Tuesday-night bluegrass jam at Oskar Blues and serves as the unofficial "bluegrass hostess" of the Lyons scene.
* Spring Creek Bluegrass Band: This band formed in the Gunnison Valley and studied in Texas before moving to Lyons and becoming the first band ever to win the band competitions at Telluride and RockyGrass in the same year, an honor they claimed in 2007.
* Eric Thorin: This respected bassist plays regularly with a large number of individuals including Drew Emmit, Brother Mule and Open Road Bluegrass Band.
* Todd Livingston: This slide-guitar player moved to Boulder to study under Van Meter, and he proved to be a quick learner. His group, Hit & Run, became a fast favorite. And he also won first place at RockyGrass' Dobro championship in 2001, returning the next year as an instructor.