A couple of weeks ago, we announced our new Call for Scores for our “Guinevere’s Tale” concert series. We’ve gotten some great feedback and are excited to see the music we’ll be bringing together for audiences next year.
This blog post isn’t really a composer highlight as we aren’t working with them specifically, but I thought I’d briefly write about singer-songwriter Heather Dale and her compositions on the Arthurian legends.
In the past, I’ve focused on music as a means to perform and tell a story. I’ve really enjoyed Dale’s work as its a perfect mix of storytelling with accompanying music for house concerts. She has songbooks with sheet music on her website (you can check them out here!), I bought “The Legends of Arthur” songbook which has pages describing the story of King Arthur with musical numbers interspersed throughout. Dale specifically writes that she draws her inspiration from Medieval Arthurian literature, including both the early Welsh tales and the well-known writings from Sir Thomas Malory.
Below I’ve posted her song “War Between Brothers”, one of my favorite tracks from “The Legends of Arthur”. It features a soft jazz style, which I don’t normally associate with Arthurian works but it plays off so well with the tragic subject matter. It also sounds very lovely as a keyboard solo, and is one of her songs I tend to play regularly.
Heather Dale’s Arthurian songs were a huge inspiration for us to start our own commission project. Our aim with the project is to land that same balance of storytelling to music that Dale does so well here. We’ll have more information on our project next month as we continue our Call for Scores!
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