SANGITA REVIEW BY MATT HORWARTH OF SONIC CURIOSITY

This CD from 2009 offers 50 minutes of soul-stirring music.

Fernwood is: Todd Montgomery on sitar, tenor banjo, slide and plucked Irish bouzouki, mandolin, guitar, and fiddle; and Gayle Ellett on Greek bouzouki, dilruba, ruan, bulbul tarang, jal tarang, guitar, oud, cumbus, dotara, tambura, swarmandal, gobijen, harmonium, organ, Rhodes piano, and upright bass.

Again, the ethnicity of the instruments is trumped by the performers’ Contemporary Americana and Old World sensibilities, resulting in music that applies modern character to the foreign strings used.

Plucked, strummed, picked, sawed, slid--there’s an abundance of nimble-fingering going on here. The diverse strings contribute a versatile range of sounds which merge to form enchanting tunes. The interplay of different instruments produces an alluring charm that transcends all preconceived notions, uniting nationalities and genres with compelling sonic elation.

The moods generated by this music are quite diverse. One track (“Hobbs Bay”) excellently conveys a salty sea breeze, while another (“White Oak”) majestically evokes the grandeur of ancient trees that dwarf human perception. A lot of these tracks capture the mood of geological locations, most of them coastal regions thick with noble woodlands.