New York Pinewoods Folk Music Club
Folk Music Society of New York, Inc.
450 7th Avenue #972 • New York, NY 10123 • (212) 563-4099
Website: http://www.folkmusicny.org


PRESS RELEASE

Contact for this event: Evy Mayer, (718) 549-1344 after 11 AM only.

For immediate release on or after September 24, 2001:

Nowell Sing We Clear to appear in New York City, November 30, 2001, at 8 PM.

New York Pinewoods Series Concert to features unusual Yuletide Pageant at Advent Lutheran Church.

New York Pinewoods Folk Music Club will present Nowell Sing We Clear, an eclectic musical Yuletide celebration at the Advent Lutheran Church, Broadway and West 93rd Street in New York City, on Friday evening, November 30, 2001. The show begins at 8 PM. This event is one in a series of six concerts per year presented by New York Pinewoods and is free to club members. General public admission is $13. Seniors citizens and students pay only $9 each. Children's admission is just $6. For further information the public can call Evy Mayer at (718) 549-1344 after 11 AM.

This will be the twenty-sixth touring season of Nowell Sing We Clear with its unusual songs, carols, stories, and customs. Drawn mostly from English-language folk traditions, the songs tell both a version of the events and characters involved in the Christmas story and detail the customs which make up the twelve magical days following the return of the light at the winter solstice. Many of these ancient customs are the basis of the today's holiday traditions, such as visiting and feasting, gift-giving, carol singing from door-to-door and the adorning of houses and churches with garlands of evergreen.

Nowell Sing We Clear celebrates Christmas as it was known for centuries in Britain and North America, and as it continues in many places to the present. The songs come from an age when the midwinter season was a time for joyous celebration and vigorous expression of older, perhaps pagan, religious ideas. There is not always a clear line between these and the rejoicing at the birth of Jesus bringing a fresh light into the world at this dark midwinter time. A special and unusual treat is the enactment of a Mummers Play from Kentucky. Performed in the traditional manner, the play is typical of folk dramas which survive to this day throughout Britain and North America symbolizing and portraying the death of the land at midwinter and its subsequent rebirth in the spring.

While much of the singing is done in unaccompanied style, the pageant is also stamped with the energetic dance band sound of fiddle, button accordion, electric piano, drums, and concertina and includes traditional step dancing. The audience will be supplied with song sheets and encouraged to sing along. Nowell Clear We Sing performers include John Roberts and Tony Barrand, widely known for their lively presentations of English folk songs, and Fred Breunig and Andy Davis, well known in New England as dance callers and musicians.

The Advent Lutheran Church is located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The closest subway stop is 96th Street on the 1, 2. 3. and 9 (Broadway) lines.

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