Carolyn Surrick & Ronn McFarlane
Biography Carolyn Surrick & Ronn McFarlane
Ronn McFarlane
Since taking up the lute in 1978, Ronn McFarlane has made his mark as a soloist, the founder of Ayreheart, and a founding member of the Baltimore Consort, touring 49 of the 50 United States, Canada, England, Scotland, Netherlands, Germany, and Austria. He has also performed as a guest artist with Apollo’s Fire, The Bach Sinfonia, The Catacoustic Consort, The Folger Consort, Houston Grand Opera, The Oregon Symphony, The Portland Baroque Orchestra, and The Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra.
McFarlane was on the faculty at the Peabody Conservatory from 1984 to 1995, teaching lute and lute-related subjects. In 1996, he was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Music from Shenandoah Conservatory for his achievements in bringing the lute and its music to the world. He has over 40 recordings on the Dorian/Sono Luminus label, including solo albums, lute duets, flute & lute duets, lute songs, the complete lute music of Vivaldi, a collection of Elizabethan lute music and poetry, and recordings with the Baltimore Consort.
McFarlane has composed new music for the lute, building on the tradition of the lutenists/composers of past centuries. His original compositions are the focus of his solo CD, Indigo Road, which received a GRAMMY Award Nomination for Best Classical Crossover Album of 2009.
On this recording, McFarlane is playing a 10-course lute by Travis Carey, Vancouver, BC, Canada (2016) and an 11-course lute by Andrew Rutherford, New York (1991), converted to a 13-course lute by David Brown, Baltimore, MD in 2012.
Carolyn Surrick
has a B.A. in music from the University of California Santa Cruz and an M.A. in musicology from George Washington University. She founded Ensemble Galilei in 1990 and the group started touring the U.S. in 1995. With Ensemble Galilei, she recorded fifteen CDs and produced four special projects including a partnership with The National Geographic Society for the creation of First Person: Stories from the Edge of the World as well as a collaboration with The Metropolitan Museum of Art to produce First Person: Seeing America.
With Celtic harper, Sue Richards, and multi-instrumentalist, Ginger Hildebrand, Surrick spent eight years of Fridays working with wounded warriors at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. She also worked with wounded warriors at Fort Belvoir in Virginia, as well as with Project Odyssey for the Wounded Warrior Project. The trio recorded two CDs and gave away over six thousand copies to wounded warriors and their families. Surrick also penned Between War and Here, a book of poetry about her time at Walter Reed, and has given away over a thousand copies of the book to veterans. Her latest book, The Last Day, was published in December of 2019. She is a collaborator at heart and was thrilled when the opportunity arose to create this project with Ronn. She lives outside of Annapolis, Maryland with her extended family, in a house built from a hand-hewn barn, made of American Chestnut.
Surrick’s viola da gamba was built by Marc Soubeyran in 1995, her strings were made by Damian Dlugolecki in 2020, and her bow is by Harry Grabenstein. She credits the instrument, strings, and bow with the extraordinary resonance heard on this recording.
Jackie Moran
A founding and driving force of such influential bands as The Drovers, Comas, Bua, and The Otters, Jackie Moran is a fixture in studio and concert settings, sympathetically accompanying such great artists as Alphonso Ponticelli, Kevin Burke, Dennis Cahill, Liz Carroll, John Doyle, Alain Genty, Martin Hayes, Paddy Keenan, Michael Londra, Philip Masure, David Munnelly, Aidan Burke, Howard Levy, and Jimmy Keane. Jackie’s talents have also led him to appear on stage with Riverdance and to help form and perform with the Trinity Irish Dance Company. When Hollywood needs a musician to play the part, and look it as well, you’ll see Jackie. Backdraft (1991), Blink (1993), Traveler (1997) and The Road to Perdition (2002) all had the wisdom to feature Jackie and his bodhrán.
