{"id":33894,"date":"2023-11-30T18:16:23","date_gmt":"2023-11-30T23:16:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=33894"},"modified":"2023-11-30T18:16:25","modified_gmt":"2023-11-30T23:16:25","slug":"windborne-brings-traditional-harmonies-international-influences-to-cultural-centre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/windborne-brings-traditional-harmonies-international-influences-to-cultural-centre\/","title":{"rendered":"Windborne brings traditional harmonies, international influences to Cultural Centre"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Aurora Cultural Centre is now in the second phase of its Voices of the World performing arts season, and these voices will come to life this December 2, when the Boston-based Windborne makes its Aurora debut.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This Saturday, on the stage at the historic Aurora Armoury, now home to Niagara College\u2019s Canadian Food & Wine Institute, Windborne will present a showcase of their vocal harmonies, \u201cMusic of Midwinter,\u201d with FreePlay as a supporting act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cKnown for their innovation of their arrangements, their harmonies are bold and anything but predictable,\u201d says the Centre. \u201cWindborne are adherents to folk music\u2019s long-time alliance with social activism, labour and civil rights, and other movements that champion the oppressed, the poor, and the disenfranchised.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Windborne comprises of Lauren Breunig, Jeremy Carter-Gordon, Lynn Rowan and Will Rowan who came together with a love of harmony coupled with a drive to explore different styles of music across both borders and centuries, \u201cilluminating and expanding on the profound power and variation of the human voice.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s all about exploring what the voice is capable of and we do that in a number of ways,\u201d says Carter-Gordon. \u201cThere\u2019s a section of what we do that is really looking at some of the ways the voice can be used in harmony from different countries and cultures with different singing masters from different places like Basque country and Lithuania where we just were, and in the Mediterranean, learning not just one of the notes and one of the syllables, but vocal production and how you conceive of a song. What are the cultural ways that people understand what it means to sing in harmony and the different ways of using the voice? Another big part of what we do is singing songs from the past \u2013 movements of social struggles, environmental rights, workers\u2019 rights, or just human rights.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Windborne\u2019s interest in vocal harmonies has its roots in the New England tradition in which its members grew up. Harmonies at any kind of gathering became second-nature to them. Their parents, says Carter-Gordon, would often join in the harmonies, \u201cbut everyone was kind of improvising their own harmonies on the spot to make this whole, big group sing and that is sort of the fabric in which we learned what music was.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat was really part of our childhoods,\u201d he says, adding that it wasn\u2019t until their teen years that they discovered not every part of the U.S. had this tradition of harmonies, but was more engrained in cultures beyond their shores.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe started as a group of friends who like singing together rather than as a band who wanted to be touring performers. I am the newest one in the band, joining in 2013, but the three of them did their first concert in 2004. For many years, it existed as something that was a hobby and fit in other parts of our life, but it changed in a pretty dramatic way in January of 2017.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was just around Inauguration Day in the United States and the band was keen to release a book called, \u201cSong of the Times,\u201d bringing together songs of social movement. Their efforts got a boost when a video of them singing outside Trump Tower went viral with people the world-over telling the band their music was just what was needed at just the right time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat was really the moment we were made aware this was something special,\u201d says Carter-Gordon, adding their next project will be an album capturing the magic of mid-winter and solstice, a preview for which will figure in this week\u2019s Aurora show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe want people to take away that musical experience. There is that cross-cultural connection that we talk about in our concerts, the history of the songs, the styles that they come from and when we\u2019re doing our music\u2026it can almost be like a trojan horse; people who might not think so much about these ideas in their everyday life will end up being in an emotionally receptive space to these ideas. We\u2019re talking about something that happened 200 or 400 years ago\u2026 and are still relevant to today\u2019s world and that allows them to think about it in a new way, making those connections across the centuries and continents, giving a more connected feeling of what the world is.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more about the concert, including ticket information, visit auroraculturalcentre.ca\/event\/windborne-freeplay. Doors open at 6.45 p.m. for a 7.30 showtime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Aurora Cultural Centre is now in the second phase of its Voices of the World performing arts season, and these voices will come to life this December 2, when the Boston-based Windborne makes its Aurora debut. This Saturday, on the stage at the historic Aurora Armoury, now home to Niagara College\u2019s Canadian Food & […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-8OG","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-03 08:42:48","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33894\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}