The Muses bring Celtic music to Casper stage
by Elysia Conner
Long before Tanya Brody and Matthew Gurnsey met, fell in love and blended their voices, they were growing up with the music that would one day bring them together.
Gurnsey lived in Colorado, where he and his family often gathered around a piano to sing. His strong sense of Scottish heritage inspired him through the years.
Brody’s Irish family celebrated their ancestry with music as well. She remembers passing the time during long car trips singing in rounds.
While it wasn’t popular among her friends, Brody said she listened to Mary O’Hara and other Irish folk performers.
Brody met her husband at a Renaissance fair where she was playing a harp, she said in a recent interview with the Casper Journal.
“He gave up ‘a real job’ to tour with me,” she added about how they formed The Muses five years ago.
With their love for music and the compatibility of their ideas, “it was a logical step,” Brody said, to perform together.
Their goal is to share their love of Celtic music and renew appreciation for the tradition.
They will bring their voices, described as “bewitching vocal harmony,” and a variety of traditional Celtic instruments to Casper on Friday, Jan. 16, at 7:30 p.m. at Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church.
Audiences may not be familiar with a bohdra’n, concertina, harp, hammered dulcimer or a psaltery, but this couple can play all of these and more.
The two are widely known for adding new life to songs, and contributing their own original material to Celtic music.
Neither of them remembers a time when they weren’t performing on stage, Brody said.
Each has a background of singing in various choirs and madrigal groups. Both have run a business involving performance or interactive theater.
At times, The Muses perform as a trio and a quartet, adding another vocalist, instrumentalist or fiddler.
From Hawaii to Maine, and Vancouver to Florida, The Muses have performed at weddings and pubs to concerts and main stages at Scottish games and Celtic festivals.
Many tours with Renaissance festivals have given them an edge by being able to involve the audience, they said.
“You feel like they are entertaining you, not just being ‘the entertainment,’” said Gil Clark, president of the Savannah Scottish Games.
“They have a chemistry that sparks,” said Antonio Santos, president of the Scots-American Society of Brevard.
To learn more about The Muses, visit www.themusesmusic.com.
If you go …
ARTCORE presents The Muses
Friday, Jan. 16, 7:30 p.m. at Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church
Ticket outlets are Ayres Jewelry, Hill Music, The Shade Tree, Simply Shelia and Sonic Rainbow. Tickets are $12 for adults, $11 for seniors, $6 for students and school teachers and $4 for children under 12.
For more information, contact ARTCORE at 265-1564 or artcorewy@aol.com.