MIKE REDFERN
Not that I needed reminding, but Lizzie Hoyt’s concert at Studio 64 last Saturday certainly confirmed and enhanced my love of the particular qualities of joy and sadness to be found in Celtic music. The airy, ringing tones of Hoyt’s clear, strong voice would surely echo ‘from glen to glen and down the mountainsides’ with great authenticity anywhere in the Celtic world.
The evening’s program included several traditional folk songs and instrumentals, sung or played with verve by Hoyt on the fiddle or guitar, backed by Chris Tabbert on mandolin and guitar and Josh McHan on double bass. Her repertoire, however, though maintaining echoes of the Celtic tradition throughout, contained many songs from other genres. These included several highlights of the night, songs that Hoyt wrote herself, telling stories she first heard from her grandmother or her great uncle about the 1st World War and early settlement in Canada. The poignant lyrics of ‘White Feather’, about a young Irish medical student accused of cowardice for trying to finish his studies before joining up to fight in World War 1, where he ultimately died in the trenches, and ‘Vimy Ridge’, her song about the 4-day battle by Canadian soldiers in April, 2017, to capture the seven kilometre long ridge and Hill 145, with the loss of almost 3,600 dead and 7,000 wounded, caused many a wet cheek among the spellbound audience.
Lizzie Hoyt proved to be not only a lovely singer and talented multi-instrumentalist but a great story-teller as well. Some of her songs may have produced tears but her stories provided much laughter. Such is her versatility that she closed the first set by clogging while she played the fiddle and sang. It was a stellar performance by one of the most personable performers we have had the privilege to hear Live at Studio 64 during the past 6 years. When she sang as her encore the traditional Irish ballad ‘Danny Boy’, simply and quietly, without the flourishes that often accompany renditions of that song, the audience sat suspended in breathless silence until the final note had faded away before rising to its feet for the second time that evening to acknowledge with enthusiastic applause her beautiful delivery of the song.
It is no surprise that when Hoyt produced her CD, ‘New Lady on the Prairie’ in 2013, the title song of which is about her grandmother’s immigration to the northern wilds of the prairies in the 1920s, she was awarded the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal by the Governor General of Canada for bringing Canadian history to life with her songs. I’m sure her many past awards and nominations for awards will be joined by many more as she continues to tour festivals and music venues across Canada.
This was the first concert in 2019’s Live at Studio 64 spring series. It will be followed on April 19 by the Calgary bluegrass quintet, Rotary Park, and on May 25 by the Boston-based band, Dead Flowers, in a concert entitled ‘Rolling Through Stones Country’, a tribute to the music of the Rolling Stones, blues, R & B, and a little bit of country.
Tickets for the upcoming concerts are available at Centre 64 (250-427-4919 or info@kimberleyarts.com) or online at eastkootenay.snapd.com.
