Imbolc Concert
Friday February 2nd, 2024
Doors at 5:30pm
Show from 6:30-8:30pm
at the Taborspace Sanctuary
5441 SE Belmont St.
Very Limited Door Tickets- $35
Venmo and Cash only
Stay updated by responding “Going” on the Facebook Event Page
Imbolc is a Pagan holiday marking the midway point between winter and spring. This is a time to call upon Celtic Goddess Brigid to bless the land and its people with fertility and abundance
If you long to connect with nature, the turning seasons, and observe Imbolc, if you love to witness live harmonic singing, then this concert is for you.
This concert will feature music guided by the fungi with traditional European polyphonic influence. Tightly woven voices with layered harmonies and rhythms that honor the earth and bring our community together, like mycelial strands connecting trees.
Featured Performances by
Earth Women
Earth Women sing ancient polyphonic European Earth worshipping songs. Gathered by Ayla, these women sing to reclaim their wild, raw, and authentic voices as a response to the overarching pressure to only share pretty polite and perfect sounds. This group is modeled after women’s singing group Laboratorium Piesni, who reclaim their wildness, and sing songs that are in reverence to our shared planet.
Earth Women sings with their feminine Earth bodies, these amazingly intelligent instruments that reflect our planet- circular flowing lunar cycles.
Earth Women singing Dilmano Dilbero as composed by Laboratorium Piesni at Imbolc Concert 2023. Bulgarian folk song about planting peppers: “Pomucni go, pobucni”, Poke the ground, plant it there.
Earth Women singing Rana Na Ivana as composed by Laboratorium Pesni at Lunasa Cascadia 2023. In honor of Belarusian Goddess Kupala and the high Summer Season.
Sara Tone
Portland based musician, educator, and activist, Sara Tone shares her love songs for the Earth as a multi-instrumentalist. Expressing herself through voice, guitar, bari-uke, kalimba, ocarina, and an assortment of percussion instruments.
Her style ranges from deep heart rooted soul, world folk, with an undeniable hip-hop approach. (Read: dorky choir kid with a strong ear taught herself lots of instruments to try to express and share the nature inspired symphony she hears and feels intensely). You’ll often find her building musical ideas and passions into sonic reality through loop based harmonies and beat-boxing.
More than songs, there's an intentionality and vibe created and held with the collective power of presence and gratitude that the music emanates and amplifies, a prayer, a spell...a Roots Transmission!! Clip of song Avellana here. SaraTone.org
Hyphae
Hyphae is trio of mycologist singers including Koby McConnell, Anna Wilson, and Ayla Realta. They come together through the symbiosis of human and fungi communication using polyphonic vocals and etherial themes to create meditative mushroom music.
They sing as the High Fae, of the hyphae- this most fundamental aspect of fungi. Hyphae are the single cell strands that come together to make up mycelium in fungi.
High Fae speaks to the energetic characters the fungi invokes in each of them, namely- Fae Empress, Gnome Queen, and Goblin King.
Koby McConnell, Anna Wilson and Ayla Realta rehearsing Gray Light Season to be performed live at the Imbolc Concert.
MyTreeArch
Alessandra Sanniola, Ali Pullen, and Ayla channel the song of the Turkey Tail from the deep dank mossy forest.
MyTreeArch is an accapella trio that channels particularly feminine qualities of fungi. This group comes together gathering songs foraged from the mushroom entities in old growth forests.
Ali Pullen, Alessandra Stellina and Ayla Realta sing to embody the voice of fungi without using words or concepts. They allow the species to sing them through direct ephemeral downloads, experiencing the species entirely through vocal frequencies.
Grand Aria Performance: The Flower Duet
From the French Opera Lakmé ,
written by Leo Delibes,
the song “Sous le dôme épais”,
translated as “under the dense canopy”,
is also commonly known as “The Flower Duet”.
With two classically trained vocalists- Anna Wilson as Lakmé, and Ayla Réalta as Mallika, these beautiful moving harmonies will fill the Sanctuary space, in the traditional style of Opera, unmiked, for a direct transmission of vocal resonance.
Accompanied by Niki Farley on a Grand Steinway Piano.
We have decided to include Opera as a part of the celebration of Imbolc. What better way to honor the earth than with the most grand of vocal frequencies. This dramatic and romantic music that is known to test the ability, strength, and endurance of the human voice will be a part of our offering for Brigid.
Imbolc and Fungi
Traditionally, Imbolc is celebrated on February 1st and is known as Brigid’s day, where this goddess would be called upon to bless the land with fertility for the beginning of the agricultural year. Imbolc, translated as “in the belly” referrers to the pregnancy or lactation of the ewes, a signal that nutrient dense food is on the way. Farmers would begin the long process of preparing the land for spring and planning crops for the coming year. The people would gather in excitement and anticipation for spring; this day was an important marker of the changing seasons. The people would see themselves as inseparable from the land, so all celebrations honored these natural relationships.
In today’s culture, few of us have maintained this intimate relationship to the land, and what’s more is that we are tasked to heal the devastation caused by humans. I believe that our relationships with fungi is the source of our greatest healing, not only for our spiritual connection to ourselves as nature, but also healing our bodies and immune function through medicines and remediating the land and the earth- our cosmic body.
When I think of fertility and calling for the abundance of food and resources, some of the main concerns of Imbolc, I am pointed to the microbes, bacteria and fungi that make up the healthy soil for nutrient rich food. I also think of mycorrhizae, the intercellular relationships between plants and fungi formed in root systems, which includes plant species that we depend on for food.
Even with Fungi’s incredible roles, including perpetuating the ecological functions that allow all of life to exists, they are often unnoticed and under appreciated. For this reason, I am committed to re-centering our focus to mushrooms and fungi at any given opportunity.