Windbourne
Winter's Celebrations
I'm extremely biased. I've been a Windbourne groupie for years. And to think, they'd considered having me in the group nearly 15 years ago. I didn't listen to the tape they sent me for years and then realized they wanted me to audition. Oh well.
Windbourne has put out three albums - Echoes on the Wind, To Touch a Dream, and this one, Winter's Celebrations. The first two are nearly impossible to find, and would probably cost more than a pretty penny to purchase if you could find them. Winter's Celebration, on the other hand, is a heck of a lot newer, so it's still available.
The members of the group when this project was done were: Harold Groot as male of the species, Rilla Heslin as alto, Katherine Ring on keyboards, and the lovely and talented Karen Rodgers doing most of the pretty guitar work. Oh, the women are all lovely and talented, but it would seem unseemly on a catalog page to call all of them that. And Harold might object to being called "lovely and talented," so he'll have to settle for "talented."
As of this date, the group is now a duo, consisting of Rilla Heslin and Karen Rodgers.
Here's the play list:
Yeppers, that's 27 songs for $14. Now for the stories behind the album that I know about:
I used to go down to San Diego every month for the monthly filksing. There was one occasion, though, when I went down and was asked if I could help them get a few songs ready for a Christmas concert in the area. Well, over the course of an hour, I taught them the Carol of the Bells (not in the original Ukranian, unfortunately) and Do You Hear What I Hear. Why, you may ask? Well, this crazy Jew had performed or prepared to perform these two pieces back in the mid-1960's and was able to pull upon some ancient memories to do it. I do remember hearing the foursome doing Carol of the Bells a capella. It was glorious! Regarding Do You Hear What I Hear, it turns out they had the sheet music of the version I was supposed to sing back in 1967 or 1969, so it was easy for me to get them through it.
Why the Jewish songs? Well, the San Diego people realized that not everyone celebrates Christmas, and decided that they'd include some Hanukkah and/or Jewish songs on the album. "Light One Candle" is, I think, from Peter, Paul and Mary. "Bashanah Ha-Baah" ("next year" in Hebrew) was one of the pieces of music used over the years for El Al Israel Airlines commercials, and was a very popular piece in Israel, the US and, surprisingly, Japan in the late 1960's (I'm as serious as a heart attack on that - I've heard the recording in Japanese). Ask if you want details on that one.
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