High-energy Celtic band to play in Lipscomb's Artist Series
Janel Shoun |
The acoustic Planet Reel is the third performance in Lipscomb’s Artist’s Series 2006-07 season. Cost is $5 for students, $10 for others and free with a Lipscomb ID.
The four-person ensemble specializes in traditional and contemporary Celtic folk music intertwined with rhythms and instrumental textures from around the world. Planet Reel has been performing since 1997 and uses a variety of instruments from fiddle and flute to accordion, bouzouki, dulcimer and harp. The group plays a variety of Celtic styles from traditional Irish dances and jigs to Scottish and Irish folk songs.
The ensemble is as much a friendship and a community as it is a band, said Susanna Perry Gilmore, noting that she and two other band members – her husband Barry Gilmore and Josh Culley – began playing Celtic music together while in school at Nashville’s Hume-Fogg High School. They were known back then in the 1980s as Bards of a Feather.
That close friendship is mirrored in a casual performance style that values musical exploration. No set list from any concert has ever been an exact duplicate of another, and every performance the band has ever given has included new material. For the members of Planet Reel, performances are about having fun playing music and bringing that same “foot-stomping” fun to an audience.
Susanna Perry Gilmore, who plays fiddle and vocals, is the concertmaster for the Memphis Symphony and a distinguished adjunct professor of violin at the University of Memphis. She received her bachelor’s degree in musicology and theory from Oxford University in England and her master’s in violin performance from the New England Conservatory. Barry Gilmore is a teacher and author in Memphis and plays the guitar, bouzouki, tenor banjo, hammered dulcimer and bodhran.
Josh Culley has played the flute, accordion, bodhran, bouzouki, harp and whistle for 15 years. He has been a member of Celtic ensembles based in Boston, Washington, D.C., Memphis, and Nashville, where he currently lives and performs in the ensemble Nosey Flynn.
John Albertson, plays fiddle, mandolin, and guitar. He is a member of Memphis-based rock band Java and performs regularly in a number of world music ensembles.
Robert Johnson has played guitar in a number of ensembles and can be seen regularly in Memphis with the ensemble Celtic World.