With

Custer LaRue

Let's Make This Woman Famous, Goddamn it!

30 odd years ago high above a sleepy Southern valley a long-awaited
alignment of the stars had just come into position.Little did the gentle
folk of that region realise then that greatness had just been born into their
midst.

And now that greatness begins to touch us all...

And so shall her praises be evermore sung...

Soprano Custer La Rue, whose style of singing is informed both by
classical training and by her interest in traditional music, has
achieved a rare fluency in the styles, dialects, and history of the
songs she performs. As one reviewer has written, "her delivery and the
conviction in her pure, unpretentious voice are such that we can imagine
La Rue [to be] the first and true singer of these tunes."

Custer

Custer LaRue is an award-winning graduate of the Peabody conservatory of
Music, where she was a pupil of Mlle. Flore Wend. A native of the
Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, she teaches voice at Mary Baldwin
College. Her recent Dorian CD of Anglo-American traditional ballads
(Custer LaRue Sings the Daemon Lover), accompanied by members of the
Baltimore Consort, placed high on the Billboard charts for several
months, and her new Dorian release, The True Lovers' Farewell, has
received outstanding reviews.
© Copyright 1999, Minnesota Public Radio.

True Lover's Farewell: Custer LaRue
Grilled Pterodactyl
is an electronic fanzine from
David R Grigg (drgrigg@ozemail.com.au)
Copyright David R Grigg 1995-1997. All rights reserved.
ISSN 1325-2763
The True Lover's Farewell: Appalacian Folk Ballads: Custer LaRue
(soprano) with members of The Baltimore Consort (Dorian Recordings
DOR-90213).

C.LaRue

This lady with the strange name specialises in singing folk music, but
it is interesting that her approach to this kind of music has been
through singing mediaeval and Renaissance music, giving her treatment of
this music a very unique style.
The songs on this disc, too, have a strange style. They clearly come
originally from Europe, particularly the British Isles, but on the way
through the American Appalacians they have aquired a faster beat, and in
some cases quite different tunes. The songs, and tunes, were collected
from old people living in this area of America, and each song is notated
with the date of its collection, and the singer who sang it for the
collector.
There are some beautiful individual tracks: the long ballad "Lord
Bateman" with a wonderfully catchy tune, and unusually for a traditional
ballad, a happy ending; "Soldier Boy for Me" with its careless approach
to love (reminiscent of Lydia in "Pride and Prejudice"); the sad,
lyrical "Arise, Arise, You Slumbering Sleeper".
I've been playing this, and a companion disc, "Custer LaRue sings the
Daemon Lover", quite a lot recently, and I've still to grow wearing of
listening to them.

If your notion of an early-music ensemble is a bunch of dotty
counter-cultural types tooting away on out-of-tune instruments, think
again, folks. The Baltimore Consort is coming to town, and when they
were last here three years ago, they had a sold-out audience laughing
one second, blown away by their lovely music the next. Led by
resplendently named soprano Custer LaRue, the six-member Baltimore
Consort is a fun and lively group.
The core of their repertory is Renaissance music, but their programs
include Scottish and Appalachian tunes (as well as a few bawdy numbers).
The group plays not only the requisite recorders, but also lute, viols,
rebec, krummhorn, and some you may never have heard of. Make haste,
varlet this one is almost sold out already.

The Baltimore Consort

B.Consort

Biography:
The Baltimore Consort was founded in 1980 to perform the repertory for
Elizabethan consort, a specific instrumentation consisting of treble
viol, flute, lute, cittern, bandora and bass viol. Familiarity with
English music quickly led to an interest in broadside ballads and in
Scottish airs and dances. A program of Scottish music was first
presented in 1983, shortly after the Consort's New York debut in the
Music Before 1800 series. In 1985 a program entitled "The Ballad Monger"
explored the relationship between 'folk' and 'art' music in England and
incorporated a virginal into the ensemble. Since that time, the
Baltimore Consort has concentrated on British, French, and Italian music
of the 16th and 17th centuries, with special attention to improvising
and creating arrangements in the style of that period.

Christmas concerts have expanded the instrumentarium to include consorts
of recorders, viols, and crumhorns, together with a variety of plucked
instruments, organ, and virginal. The Consort's first Christmas CD,
Bright Day Star [DOR-90198], was re-released in 1996.

The Baltimore Consort has toured extensively in the U.S.A. and, in 1992,
initiated European touring with appearances in Vienna and Regensburg at
the Tage Alter Musik Festival. The Consort and its members have been
heard on National Public Radio's All Things Considered and Performance
Today, as well as MPR's St. Paul Sunday Morning.

Billboard magazine named The Baltimore Consort one of the Top Classical
Crossover Artists for 1993. The Art of the Bawdy Song and Custer LaRue
Sings the Dæmon Lover were listed as two of the Top Classical Crossover
Albums of 1993.

Rocque

The Baltimore Consort personnel are:
Mary Anne Ballard - treble and bass viols, rebec
Mark Cudek - cittern, Baroque guitar, tenor viol, tenor recorder
Custer LaRue - soprano
Larry Lipkis - viol, soprano recorder
Ronn McFarlane - lute
Chris Norman - wooden flutes, bagpipe

Discography:
[DOR-90139] On the Banks of Helicon: Early Music of Scotland
[DOR-90142] Watkins Ale: Music of the English Renaissance
[DOR-90155] The Art of the Bawdy Song (with The Merry Companions)
[DOR-90174] Custer LaRue Sings the Dæmon Lover: Traditional Ballads & Songs of England, Scotland & America
[DOR-90177] La Rocque 'n'Roll: Popular Music of Renaissance France
[DOR-90198] Bright Day Star: Music for the Yuletide Season
[DOR-98101] A Baltimore Consort Collection: 3 Compact Discs
[DOR-90238] A Trip to Killburn: Playford Tunes and their Ballads
[DOR-90235] Tunes from the Attic
[DOR-90252] The Ladyes Delight
The True Lovers Farewell: Custer LaRue (Traditional Love Songs)
Custer LaRue Ballads... (Traditional Songs And Airs)
Elizabeth's Music: (Old English Songs And Airs)

Sheila Na Gig
Send e-mail to mapona@yahoo.com

With Custer LaRue

Let's Make This Woman Famous, Goddamn it!

With

Custer LaRue