ELIZABETHTOWN — The trio of Jeremiah McLane, Timothy Cummings and McKinley James premiere at Piano by Nature’s Garden Tea Party Fundraiser and Outdoor Concert.
The performance June 6 at 7 p.m. will be indoor only. The June 7 concert starts at 1:30 p.m. with a 3 p.m. concert on the Hand House lawn in Elizabethtown.
With McLane on accordion and piano, Cummings on pipes and whistles, and James on cello, the trio will perform originals, bal folk, Celtic, French and Scandinavian music.
In the traditional music world, professionals like them comprise a very small group who know each other. McLane and Cummings have known each other forever, McLane said, and McLane and James both attended the New England Conservatory in Boston decades apart.
“This particular program that we’re doing owes a lot to the fact that we are all three in a musical environment called bal folk. It is a French term we have adopted in this country,” McLane said.
“It is a type of dance music for Europeans, primarily, but it’s become very popular now in the United States. It’s social dance music.
“It includes things that might be familiar to you — waltzes, mazurkas. It’s not completely unlike contra dancing. It’s based, however, in Europe, so it’s different.”
Each member of the trio has a great love of French music — Baroque and contemporary — and traditional dance music. Unlike contra dance, this European approach does not have a caller that tells dancers what to do.
“Our concert is not a dance. It’s a concert. We are going to be doing the dance music of Europe, particularly France, as it has evolved in the last century, but actually, the music is much, much older. It comes from several different regions in France,” he said.
Imagine the large chunk of France that is French-speaking and then the northwest corner, which speaks an additional language, Breton.
“The area is known as Brittany. That culture has a type of music that is very connected to Irish, Scottish — in other words, Celtic music. And the music is extremely different than the French music, vastly different,” he said.
“So we play a lot of music from northwest France, and we talk about some of the historical underpinnings there that are connect to Celtic music,” he said.
The trio also perform the music of central-southern France, which links to Occitan, an ancient language ranging from southern France to northern Italy and Val d’Aran, Spain.
“We hope to educate folks as we go a little bit to the differences of these two cultures,” McLane said.
“In addition to that, we will also be talking about Celtic music from various parts of the Celtic world.”
All ticket sale proceeds go to supporting Piano by Nature’s upcoming 19th and 20th season anniversary celebration concerts.
Make reservations at pianobynature@gmail.com or call 518-962-8899.