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CD Reviews: “Roots & Wings,” (dba The Digital Folk Life. Org)
Lisa Moscatiello and Rosie Shipley, “Well Kept Secrets” (www.lisamoscatiello.com)
And really you wonder why they’re a secret, if that’s what the title of this CD refers to. For a start, Gene Shay, than-whom there’s not a better pair of ears around - is quoted as calling Lisa Moscatiello “one of the best voices in the business.” The Washington (DC) Area Music Awards has handed her a number of awards for her luscious alto, most recently honoring her with “Artist of the Year” and “Album of the Year,” for her CD *Second Avenue.” She toured the US and abroad for six years with the NYC-based Celtic-fusion band, Whirligig (we had the privilege of seeing them in concert up at Centenary College, back when I was DJ’ing at WNTI), and she was the lead singer for the excellent folk-rock band, The New St George. Most recently, she sang in Johnny Cunningham’s “Peter and Wendy,” a beautiful update of JM Barrie’s classic, “Peter Pan.”
On this CD, she’s teamed up with Rosie Shipley, a native of Baltimore who learned Irish fiddling from Brendan Mulvihill, son of the legendary Martin Mulvihill (whose School of Irish Music & Dance in the Bronx once featured Eileen Ivers, another child prodigy), and furthered her studies up in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, among those fine fiddlers. Now, Rosie tours with Gerry O’Bierne, Irish singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist, and has appeared as guest fiddler (and pianist) with Cherish The Ladies, the well-known Irish-American traditional band, besides having already put out her own debut recording, *At Home,” with brothers Peter (also on fiddle) and Trevor (flute/uillean pipes/tin-whistle.
“Well Kept Secrets”? I suppose, if you’ve been looking in the wrong direction, whatever that would be. Look over here: It’s Lisa’s smoothly-gorgeous alto, accompanied by Rosie’s silky fiddling, on “Mon Cher Amant” (always wanted to hear Lisa sing a French ballad) and “The Flowers of Saskatchewan” – I won’t mention Bob Dylan’s “Girl from the North Country,” but I just did, oh well – following up on newcomer David Frauncey’s anti-war lament, “The Flowers of Saskatchewan.” It’s Rosie with a jaunty, “Far From Home” and a clutch of “Kerry Polkas,” and a couple of sweet, near-syncopated, “Slip Jigs.” It’s Lisa and her version of the Scottish traveling diva, Belle Stewart’s, classic “night-visiting song,” with the supernatural lover an eerie bedside presence, in “Here’s a Health to All True Lovers.” It’s Rosie, coupling the great Chicago fiddler, Liz Caroll’s, “That’s Right Too,” in a medley with Sean Ryan’s “Abbeyleix Reel” and a tune from Co. Clare’s Tola Curry, “The Tattie Ball,” as if they’d been born welded together. And it’s Lisa with a lovely, lilting tune from Maggy Murphy and an inevitably-sad story from Roisin White, “My Father’s Serving Boy.” Ah well. Ten tunes, songs and/or medleys, it is.
If this remains a secret, there’s – there’s no justice in Washington DC. H’m. Should I be going there? Never mind. It’s a beautiful collection, what The Washington Times calls “an achingly beautiful recording.” You can hear Lisa and Rosie performing the music from this CD at the Old Songs Festival, in upstate New York, or at the Champlain Valley Folk Festival, at The Towne Crier, at Caffe Lena – and you’ll thank your ears they led you there. If it’s hard getting there for you, then you can always get in touch with their label – www.shipwhistle.com - and you’ll be happy with that too. Fine fiddling, lovely singing – now, why would those be “Well Kept Secrets”?
(Review Copyright by John McLaughlin, 5/22/2004)