Celtic harp and cello will create enchanting harmonies at St. John’s
Cellist Eugene Friesen and harpist Maeve Gilchrist have nothing but praise for one another.
Says Friesen of Gilchrist: “She is phenomenal, and I think that her sincerity and her complete mastery is something that people will find an immediate affection for.”
“I’ve always admired his work and his compositions greatly,” Gilchrist says of her colleague.
The pair of musicians will visit Lodi from the East Coast — Friesen from the Berklee College of Music in Boston, and Gilchrist from Brooklyn, New York — for an evening of solos and duets at St. John’s Episcopal Church on Saturday.
The concert is part of the Arts at St. John’s, a program that counts Friesen among its alumni.
“One of the people who helped us with (the Arts at St. John’s) many, many years ago was actually Eugene Friesen,” said Pete Krengel, who helps organize musical acts for the concert series.
When the church launched the concert series a little over a dozen years ago, Friesen was already part of the Paul Winter Consort, a groundbreaking group that mixes classical and jazz music with the sounds of nature.
Friesen had family living in Lodi, and returned to the area to play at St. John’s. Occasionally, he’d bring along other members of the Paul Winter Consort or other musician friends.
“We put these eclectic concerts together, and that started things,” Krengel said. “It’s neat to have Eugene back.”
Gilchrist is new to Lodi, but she and Friesen have been colleagues since she was first a student, then a fellow professor at Berklee.
Friesen called Gilchrist a “rare” folk musician.
“I first met her when she was kind of fresh from Scotland, and I was just immediately knocked out by her maturity as a player and also by her creative gifts,” he said.
Both Gilchrist and Friesen have enormous musical backgrounds.
A native of Edinburgh, Scotland, Gilchrist is from a musical family and grew up playing traditional Scottish and Irish music.
“We call it a family affliction,” she said.
She moved to Boston in 2003 to study at Berklee, and upon graduating was immediately offered a position on the faculty. She was the first harpist to serve on the college’s faculty, and held that position for five years.
She’s now based in Brooklyn, where she works on several projects. She also visits Scotland and Ireland regularly, to stay in touch with the musical world there.
Like her connections to both sides of the Atlantic, she has her feet in two musical worlds as well: traditional folk, and more innovative, eclectic and contemporary music.
She plays with DuoDuo Quartet, which blends Irish, Scottish, Quebecois and percussive dance traditions — herself, dancer Nick Gareiss, cellist Natalie Haas and acoustic guitarist Yann Falquet. Edges of Light features a more Celtic spin, with Gilchrist, Irish dancer Colin Dunne, fiddler Tola Custy and uillean piper David Power.
The harp is an instrument that comes with stereotypes, Gilchrist said, and she enjoys shattering them.
“It’s so often associated with arrhythmic, ethereal soundscapes,” she said. “It can also be a real, driving, rhythmic force.”
Friesen, too, got into music early. A native of Fresno, he remembers hauling his cello to school with him in a little red wagon.
Like Gilchrist, he enjoys breaking stereotypes with his instrument. The cello has been associated with classical music, but after having his “mind blown” by the Beatles as a teen, Friesen began playing pop and rock as well.
“Especially at that time, it was pretty novel,” he said.
Growing up in the United States gave him the room to experiment, he said.
“It’s given me a musical environment that’s full of rock and blues and cool folk music,” he added.
In addition to his work at the Berklee College of Music and the Paul Winter Consort, Friesen performs with Howard Levy and Glen Velez in Trio Globo. He’s been awarded four Grammy Awards.
The pair have played together once before, about three years ago.
“It really made for a lovely evening, to hear these two instruments,” Gilchrist said.
Friesen and Gilchrist will perform solo and together at the concert.
The Arts at St. John’s is excited to bring the two of them to Lodi, not just to share their music with the community, Krengel said. (Everyone is welcome, he added.)
Rev. Elaine Breckenridge, the priest at St. John’s, is a Celtic historian.
“I’m so glad that finally we have some true Celtic performers that Mother Elaine will appreciate and enjoy,” Krengel said.
He hopes the community will come out to enjoy Friesen and Gilchrist’s musical mastery and St. John’s excellent acoustics as well, he said.
“I love the acoustics at St. John’s, and the community,” Friesen said. “It’s always different playing for friends or people you know.”