Audio Feature: Keeping Still Music

The Long Road from Woodstock

by Liz Hamill ’82

January 2, 2010

Liz Hamill ’82

These songs are the ones closest to being conceptually influenced by Allen Tanner.  He loved singing and singers—especially sopranos. So I chose songs with classical-oriented vocal lines or classically interpreted blues or jazz lines.

In a beautiful photography book, Sacred Voices of the Nyingma Masters, one of my dharma teachers, Jigme Khyentse Rinpoche, explains that Buddha did not teach to entertain, that he had nothing to sell. Buddha taught the Four Noble Truths, but Rinpoche breaks Buddha’s truths down to two: “You are suffering, and there is a way out.”

These songs, then, are portraits of suffering: unrequited love, war, death in the family, exile in one’s own land. Only Joni Mitchell (“Blue Woodstock”) gives us a glimpse of getting out—of getting back to the garden. And that has something to do with taming the mind or keeping still, as the I Ching’s Hexagram No. 52 says. That, and helping others.

To listen to any of the songs, click on their title or the play button next to it. To download the audio file, right click on the link and choose "save as."

"Can’t Get Started" (Vernon Duke / Ira Gershwin). Recorded live in Jordan Hall, New England Conservatory (NEC), in Boston on a nine-foot Steinway, this composition is based on versions by Billie Holiday and Paul Bley (“I Can’t Get Started,” Open to Love).  Piano and vocal: Liz Hamill.

“Shtil di Nakht”  (Hirsch Glik). A Yiddish song from the Jewish ghetto in Vilna, Poland, during World War II, this piece is influenced by Miles Davis’ Fusion period and the Klezmer Conservatory Band. The only traditional element kept in the arrangement was the melody. Vocal and arrangement: Liz Hamill. Mauricio Villavecchia, piano; Greg Porter, bass; Alan Williams synth; Taaki Masuko, marimba; Ben Wittman, drums. Also live in Jordan Hall, NEC, Boston.

“Crosswind”  (Liz Hamill). My sister Andrea studied voice with Ann Matthews, former voice instructor, at Dickinson. I first heard Schubert’s “Shepherd on the Rock” in Memorial Hall in Old West when Andrea sang it there. This song was an attempt at something like Schubert’s “the Erlking,” only for guitar and voice. Professor of Music Emeritus Truman Bullard was my first and greatest teacher in musical analysis. Guitar and vocal: Liz Hamill.

“Crossroad Blues”  (Robert Johnson).  Here I tried to keep Robert Johnson’s exquisite phrasing and melody exact while reshaping the guitar part to be something like a harp and dulcimer mixed together, perhaps via Ireland and Appalachia. Guitar and vocal: Liz Hamill.

“Blue Woodstock”  (Joni Mitchell).  This is a recomposition of two songs, “Blue” and “Woodstock,” in a minor open tuning. My intent was to keep some of the duet feeling of Joni Mitchell’s chamber work with bassist Larry Klein. Guitar and vocal: Liz Hamill.

For more selections, visit www.lizhamill.com and www.dakinimusic.com.

To learn more about Hamill, read "Dharma in two Keys."