Folias Duo Great Lakes Suite: On the Radio and on the Road
We had a great conversation this week with Cara Lieurance on WMUK’s Let’s Hear It — you can listen to the full 33-minute interview here.
We talked about the Great Lakes Suite, what it was like to write and record it, and what’s coming up this spring and summer. Here’s a bit of what we covered.
The Suite
The Great Lakes Suite is a five-movement work Andrew composed over three years, with each movement built around the character of one lake. The largest — Lake Superior — runs about 13 minutes and features me on three different flutes. Lake Huron works more like a story: a quiet boat ride out, a stumble onto an island party, and the slow return home, with all the earlier musical material folded back in by the end.
Sunday in Kalamazoo will be one of our first performances of the complete suite, and we’re looking forward to it.
The Album
Great Lakes was recorded at Oktaven Audio in Mount Vernon, New York and releases August 14. We kept the production simple — minimal reverb, close to the raw sound of the instruments in the room. A Kickstarter campaign is currently funding the first pressing, which includes CDs and, for the first time, vinyl.
Sunday’s Program
Along with the full suite, Sunday’s concert includes my new piece And Blaze the Butterflies — an Emily Dickinson setting with a bluegrass feel that lands decidedly in major key territory, which is a little unusual for us. We’ll also play an arrangement of Piazzolla’s Escualo and Heartdance from our last album.
Carmen be playing several instruments throughout, including a three-hole bamboo tambin she brought back from Guinea, where I studied with the principal flutist of Le Ballet Africain.
What’s Ahead
After Sunday, we head into a 16-concert West Coast tour in May, followed by an East Coast run later in the summer. We tend to stay in campgrounds along the way, which keeps us close to the landscapes that inform a lot of this music.
Folias Duo | Kalamazoo
Sunday, April 19 · 3 p.m.
Milwood United Methodist Church
Free and open to the public