The Ancestry

Credits for The Ancestry
Vocals, composition, arrangement	Jillian LaDage
Violin, viola, mandola	Chris Wagoner
Cello	Mary Gaines
Percussion	Todd Hammes
Recorded at	Smart Studios, Madison, Wisconsin
Mastered at	Gateway Mastering Studios, Portland, Maine
Released by	Tarith Cote — European distribution: Prikosnovenie

Album · 2008

Debut album · nine tracks

Jillian LaDage’s debut recording and Tarith Cote’s inaugural release steps through the temples of memory on a journey that leads from the medieval sands of Turkey and the Byzantine Empire to the moors and legends of the ancient Celts.

Instrumentation. Harp, piano, bodhrán, tabla, hurdy-gurdy, guitar, clarinet, viola, violin, cello, uilleann pipes and more.

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Tracks — select a title for notes

The doorway piece: a slow processional built on a low drone, bodhrán and a single reed line that establishes the modal centre the whole record returns to.
Evocative rhythm rather than melody first — frame drum and tabla setting a dance that the strings only gradually agree to join.
Named for the woodland that shelters and hides in equal measure. Harp, clarinet and a viola line that keeps slipping out of the key.
Inspired by Samuel Lover’s version of The White Trout. The enduring quest for love, life and happiness, told as a ten-minute lyric journey in its video form.
To the abbey at Cong she walked alone, where the river runs under the stone; and what she was promised, and what she was owed, the white trout carried down the road.
The instrumental hinge of the album, named for the 1071 battle that opened Asia Minor. Intricately woven strings over a Byzantine rhythmic cycle.
What the archive did not keep. Sparse piano, voice in the upper register, and a long silence written into the middle of the arrangement.
A vigil piece — the hour between the last light and the first watch. Hurdy-gurdy drone under stacked wordless vocals.
The Greek name for the people who never used it themselves. Uilleann pipes and cello trade the same phrase across a widening interval.
Balladry to close: the knot with no beginning and no end, sung almost unaccompanied until the final chorus opens into full strings.

The idea

“I came across a reference to the Celts in Asia Minor early in the eleventh century, as the Mediterranean world and the world around them came to a crossroads,” Jillian explains, “and began to follow the migration of the many Celtic tribes as the Byzantine Empire declined and the Normans invaded the British Isles.”

“The memories that had passed into the resting places of history, myth, legend and forgotten happenings were events that drew me to the stepping stone of remembrance and lineage. In turn this became the foundation of the music, and as I experienced it, the common thread that held the Celts together through the opening of this great cultural Pandora’s box.”

The sound

The eclectic Celtic singer-composer’s rich musical tapestry of harp, piano, bodhrán, tabla, hurdy-gurdy, guitar, clarinet, viola, violin, cello, uilleann pipes and more embraces the quest of the medieval mystic, unifying the ancient and the modern world.

Its nine self-produced tracks range from the intricately woven instrumental “Manzikert” into the hauntingly melodic, traditional-folklore-inspired strains of “Bonny Was The Lady”, to the balladry of “Endless Knot” and the evocative rhythms of “Midsummer’s Night”.

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