Sarah Bauhan
Gig Seeker Pro

Sarah Bauhan

| INDIE

| INDIE
Band Folk Celtic

Calendar

This band has not uploaded any videos
This band has not uploaded any videos

Music

Press


"Review of The Untamed Grasses"

Flutist and whistle player Sarah Bauhan was raised in the Monadnock region of New Hampshire, where there is a longstanding tradition of folk music and dancing. Specifically, it's the contra dance that defines the region. A 19th century American folk dance and cousin to the square dance, contra dancing is driven principally by upbeat jigs and reels, performed on instruments such as fiddles and flutes. It's the latter that Bauhan plays with virtuosic skill throughout Untamed Grasses (Alcazar), her second album. It's a collection of both traditional and original instrumental material, and includes reels and ballads that display at every turn the effortless grace and buttery harmony of Bauhan's flute. Accompanied mainly by a spare, spry acoustic guitar, Bauhan is also joined memorably by pipes on the epic "Renn's March/Leaving Port Askaig." As her flute sketches the insistent melody over strums of plaintive guitar, the pipes rise in the background until the triumphant breaking point where the piper fleshes out Bauhan's playing with grace and grandeur. Fiddles and mandolins stop by for "HorgalŒten," while the Bauhan original "Angst" takes a contemplative turn, only to flirt with its fluttering melody like a hovering butterfly. The title track too is a solitary affair, until its midpoint when more forceful guitar and the addition of a fiddle amps its urgency like a shimmering flare in the inky night sky. A later reprise of the tune seems to morph into a jaunty waltz with the aid of a piano. Untamed Grasses stands wonderfully on its own. --Johhny Loftis - All Music Guide


"NEW RECORDING: Lathrop's Waltz, by Sarah Bauhan"

Lathrop's Waltz is the title of a new release from flute and whistle-player Sarah Bauhan. Through each of her 4 albums (starting in 1991) SarahÕs efforts have evolved in breadth and sophistication, though it must be said that she set the bar quite high from the beginning.
One could be unfamiliar with SarahÕs music, or even this genre (New England/Scottish/Celtic) and yet still reap great pleasure from listening. The melodies range from haunting to delightful, and they are well served by the caliber and diversity of the musicians. I believe Sarah took a risk (albeit well-calculated) in having such variety. Some of the pieces are rendered in a more modern, fluid style (the piano and bass stylings of Kent Allyn tastefully reveal his jazz influences), while other pieces are more solidly New England, accompanied by the inevitable Bob McQuillen, who has also served as a mentor throughout SarahÕs career.
In an interview, Sarah told the story of going, as a young musician, to the Clearwater Festival in New York. All weekend she nurtured envy for a particular wooden flute that was for sale, at a price beyond her means. When she returned to New Hampshire she told McQuillen about it, and a few days later in the mail . . . well the rest is history (and no surprise to those who know Bob). An earlier influence was the home of Jan and Newt Tolman, her godparents. Sarah spent many happy childhood moments at Greengate, their home in Nelson. She became enchanted with NewtÕs flute playing, and the repertoire of New England contra dance music which he had so enthusiastically embraced. By the time she was a teenager Sarah was good enough to join in with the Canterbury Orchestra, though she suspects her fellow players just got a kick out of having a kid around. Nevertheless, she is grateful for all the generosity shown to her when she was starting out, and she takes an opportunity here to keep it in motion. A reel, Off to California, begins with Sarah on flute and the fiddle played by 12-year old Emma Clarkson. No listener concessions are required however Ð Emma is solid. She is soon joined by Sophie Orzechowski, the daughter of fiddler Jane Orzechowski, who also appears on this and other cuts. JaneÕs sons Russell (fiddle) and Francis (piano) are included on a couple of tracks. In an expansion from her previous recordings, this album includes two vocal numbers, sung by Chloe Green, (who also represents the younger generation): a lovely rendition of The Lost Ones Ð a Garnet Rogers song written about Òthe days and nights we all spent at the Folkway in Peterborough, New Hampshire, and those dear souls we lost too soonÓ, and a traditional song The Snows They Melt the Soonest. Chloe sings with an unadorned natural beauty Ð the songs have an earthiness about them that is well supported by the instrumental accompaniment.
Sarah has the good fortune to have a relatives from Scotland: her cousin Iain Bain has been a regular guest on her recordings, playing the highland pipes. He has been a life-long musical influence for her. IanÕs daughter, Kristy Anderson, is heard on the Scottish harp. Long-time musical collaborator David Surette does some fine mandolin and bouzouki work. Marko Murray contributes some ethereal guitar throughout, and notably on Ker Jacob, a tune written by Breton guitarist Gilles Le Bigot.
It might be the variety of textures provided by the different configurations that makes it difficult to choose a favorite from LathropÕs Waltz. The liner notes for the opening tune, CalumÕs Road, say Òone of the happiest-sounding tunes I knowÓ, and you can certainly listen to it and feel quite satisfied. A more subdued joy is produced by the sheer beauty of the waltz Kusnacht.
Sarah Bauhan has lived over in Maine, for some years now, but family and friends keep her returning to the Monadnock Region where she was raised and received her musical heritage. When I have listened to her music over the years I have often felt that it possessed the gentle majesty of Mount Monadnock Ð at once graceful and powerful. With LathropÕs Waltz, the mountain has just gotten a little bit higher. --Gordon Peery - Monadnock Folklore Society


"From Folk Roots, May 2008"

Sarah Bauhan is a wonderful flute and whistle player from New Hampshire, and whatever else one might say, her recorded output is substantially less than prolific. Back in the '90's, two albums (The Untamed Grasses and Broad Waters) serendipitously emerged like jewels from the many piles of errrm, non-jewels sent this way. Since then there's been nothing until now.
She has a real knack of picking and writing some cracking tunes from or in the tradition, and assembling a similarly talented bunch of musicians to provide carefully arranged sympathetic help to succour (including in this case, the splendid Bob McQuillen, a quartet of young Orzechowski's and several others). On the tune side, her material ranges from the familiar (Calum's Road, Off to California, Brenda Stubbert) to her own lovely tributes to her father (April's Waltz, LAthrop's Waltz) - both of which deserve wide exposure. All are played with no fuss, a lot of warmth, and a delightful melodic feel. But, a virtuoso player with absolutely no need to flaunt it, Sarah's never afraid to take a back seat: there are two songs from Chloe Green (The Snows They Melt the Soonest and Garnet Roger's The Lost Ones) and a guitar solo from band member Marko Murray to vary things a little.
All in all, another really lovely, thoughtful and subtle album that holds the attention from start to finish, and which will doubtless keep finding its way back onto the player, like its predecessors. A keeper, as they say. -- Bob Walton - Folk Roots


"Tunes in the Atmosphere, Oct 07"

By Jane Eklund

Monadnock Ledger-Transcript Staff

Imagine music that rolls in like fog, sweeps through like wind, weeps like a downpour, dances the jig of sunrise. Sarah BauhanÕs latest recording, "LathropÕs Waltz," invokes the kind of changeable weather that we inhabit and that inhabits us.

Bauhan, who grew up in the Monadnock region and now lives near Portsmouth, talks about music as a way to help people experience emotions, as something that touches people and transforms them. The traditional and Celtic tunes that she writes and performs are particularly suited to that task, with their mixture of fortitude, solace and celebration.

A flute and whistle player who brings a lovely, lyrical quality to the music, Bauhan will perform a concert in celebration of the release of "LathropÕs Waltz" Saturday night at the Dublin Community Church. Most of the musicians who perform on the CD will be on hand, including Bob McQuillen of Peterborough, a National Endowment of the Arts heritage fellow and regular performer on the Monadnock contra dance circuit.

The recording also features 12-year-old fiddler Emma Clarkson, several members of the Orzechowski family and Maine musicians Marko Murray and Kent Allyn. In a departure from her earlier, all-instrumental albums, "LathropÕs Waltz" includes two haunting songs -- Garnet RogersÕ "The Lost Ones" and the traditional "The Snows They Melt the Soonest" -- both with Chloe Green on vocals.

The CD is dedicated to BauhanÕs father, William Lathrop Bauhan of Dublin, who died in March 2006 while she was putting the recording together. Sarah wrote "LathropÕs Waltz," the final tune, for his 50th birthday and played it at his memorial service.

"It was a natural thing to dedicate it to him because of losing him in the middle of it," she says.

Music has been part of BauhanÕs life since she was young. Her father, a Pennsylvania native, moved the family to the Monadnock region to be near his friend, the writer and musician Newt Tolman. "Newt was a flute player," Bauhan says, "so IÕd been listening to this stuff since before I was born."

When she was a student at The Well School in Peterborough, the now-legendary contra dance musician and caller Dudley Laufman would come by regularly to teach dancing. "He gave me a whistle to take home one week, and I never looked back," says Bauhan. "ItÕs really been the passion of my life ever since."

At 13, she was playing whistle at contra dances. "I really connected with the whistle," she says, even though it was sometimes maligned as an instrument. She wanted to be the whistleÕs champion, and considers herself lucky to have come across whistle-maker Chris Abell, whose wooden instruments she calls "beautiful."

She didnÕt pick up the flute until the early 1980s. "Everyone always said, ÔYou have to learn to play the flute,Õ" she remembers. "Any time anyone said, "You have to,Õ I went the other way."

But then a certain wooden flute called to her at Pete SeegerÕs Clearwater Festival on the Hudson River. A vendor was offering it for sale, and she kept returning to play it. "I couldnÕt afford it, and drove home in love with this flute," she says. "I told Bob McQuillen about it, and the next thing I knew it arrived."

McQuillen, an important figure in her genesis as a musician, had purchased the instrument for her.

"LathropÕs Waltz," her fourth CD, comes at a time of change. Bauhan, who had been working with her father in his company, William L. Bauhan, Publisher, while also pursuing music, is now following a new calling. SheÕs studying at Starr King, a Unitarian Universalist seminary in Berkeley, Calif.

ItÕs a decision she explained in a sermon she delivered in July to her home congregation in Portsmouth. At a lecture given by the president of Starr King, she told the congregation, "suddenly everything became really clear. É What I heard was -- you need to do something more than what you are doing to help this world. You need to go out and speak the truth with love -- there is a broken world out there and you need to be part of the team that tries to put it back together."

She made a choice to live large in the world, she said in the sermon. "We are all called to respond: to the stirrings within us, to the stirrings around us, and most of all to the stirrings that challenge us."

Music and the ministry are both callings, Bauhan says, and she finds it interesting that now that sheÕs following her new passion to divinity school, her musical career is on an upswing with the release of the new CD and the news that her second CD, "The Untamed Grasses," released by Alcazar Records, is scheduled to be reissued.

SaturdayÕs concert in Dublin starts at 7:30 p.m. Admission is $15. For more information, call 207-337-4659.

"LathropÕs Waltz" will be available at the concert, and is also on sale at the Toadstool Bookshop in Peterborough and on BauhanÕs Web site, www.SarahBauhan.com. - Monadnock Ledger Transcript


Discography

Chasing the New Moon 1991
The Untamed Grasses 1994 (rereleased in 2008)
Broad Waters 1999
Lathrop's Waltz 2007

Photos

Bio

Music is an intimate art form for Sarah Bauhan, who brings together family and long-time friends to share in performances and recordings, and pens waltzes, laments, reels and the like in honor of people who are dear to her. That's no surprise, as the traditional music she plays on whistle and flute shares her Celtic and New England roots.

Born and raised in the Monadnock Region of New Hampshire and with strong ties to her mother's native Scotland, Sarah picked up the tin whistle at the age of 12. Within two years she was performing at contra dances with Dudley LaufmanÕs Canterbury Country Dance Orchestra. In addition to Laufman, who is credited with a contra dance revival in southwest New Hampshire, Sarah was influenced by her godfather, Newt Tolman, a flute player and writer, and by Bob McQuillen, a piano player and composer who in 2002 was named a National Heritage Fellow.

In 1987, while performing at Pete Seeger's Clearwater Festival in New York, Sarah fell in love with, and soon came to own, a wood concert flute made in 1912 by the Wm. S. Haynes Flute Company of Boston. She added to that instrument a collection of fine wood and silver whistles made by Chris Abell of Asheville, N.C., adding both depth and scope to her repertoire of music.

Sarah has released four solo albums, including three on her own label, Whistler's Music: the 1991 "Chasing the New Moon," the 1999 "Broad Waters," and the 2007 "Lathrop's Waltz." "The Untamed Grasses" came out in 1993 on the Alcazar label, and was re-released in 2008 on the Alula label.

In addition to recording, Sarah performs at festivals, concerts, and dances, and has taught whistle and flute to children and adults at dance camps, in schools, and in workshops. Her performance options range from a simple duo with a guitarist or pianist to a multi-piece band with fiddle, guitar, bass, and piano and vocals.