sassafrassboston

Sassafrass Boston and Ada were delighted to perform at Vericon, the Harvard/Radcliffe Science Fiction Convention! Our concert was almost entirely Norse, including the first performance of the final two songs in the Sundown cycle. These were “Here’s To Valhalla,” a drinking song for the warriors of Asgard, and a rough demonstration of “If I Could Ask You,” a quartet for Odin, Loki, Baldur and Hella. The latter shows the children pleading with their fathers to give up their vengeance and the stubborn pride that will destroy the world through Ragnarok, and in rehearsal, Emily (Baldur) and Kara (Hella) sang the opening lines so beautifully that Ada (Loki) cried. Which means that Loki has now wept for Baldur, so he’ll be released from Hell, and the world is saved! Hurrah! (Though that does mean there may need to be some slight revisions to the song cycle before we perform it at Balticon in May. We’ll get right on that…)

Ada & Tili as Odin and Loki, performing “If I Could Ask You”

We also sang “Gift of Life” and “the Futhark Song,” and ended with a group performance of “Somebody Will,” joined by the Harvard fan community and such Vericon guests as Greer Gilman and Jo Walton. As always, it was great singing with and for you all, and we look forward to singing at Vericon again!

Also, we collected emails for our mailing list of people who want to be notified about our Kickstarter when we start it. If you’d like us to add you to that list, please do let us know!

Sassafrass also helped once again with the Vericon charity auction. This year Ada as Loki helped lead a Team Competition, between “Team Good” and “Team Evil.” In the end we raised more than $12,000 for Doctors Without Borders, four times what we did last year, and far beyond what anyone expected. You can see the records of the competition on the chalkboard behind us. Many thanks to all who helped make the auction a staggering success!

Some pie at Pi-Con!

We have returned happily from Enfield, CT, where the Boston Contingent of Sassafrass performed at this year’s Pi-Con! The concert featured some of our newer Norse songs– Kara and Emily dueting on “Abandoned,” as well as our full-group Sundown finale, “Longer in Stories Than Stone.” We also brought back some very old favorites, like “For You Are the Wind,” and “All the Time in the World,” and closed with a full-group rendition of “Somebody Will,” dedicated to the Mars Rover Curiosity. Stay tuned– we hope to post videos from the concert to our YouTube channel by the end of the week!

We’d like to thank everyone who helped us this weekend, especially Peter Ellis for his splendid work in organizing and making everything happen, as well as our Stranger Ways colleague Nat Budin for all his technical help with the panel we presented on Sunday morning on audio recording and multi-tracking. And it was, as always, great to see so many new and familiar faces in the audience at our concert, and at the Filk 101 panel on Saturday morning. We’re looking forward to seeing you all again at Arisia, if not before!

To keep people up-to-date, we’re also happy to announce the rejuvenation of our Twitter account, @sassafrassmusic. Please follow us there for all the latest news on concerts, recording, videos, new songs, and everything else you might want to know!

This wedding was a fun chance to look back on Sassafrass's own happy wedding memories, like here, when Irina & Beecher are heading off in the Starship Limo!

In early May, we were honored to be invited to perform at the wedding of Mark Roth and Barbara Locklin. This was a joint venture between different Sassafrass branches, with Emily, Kara, Lila, Ruth, and Sandry driving down from Boston to join Beecher and Irina in Virginia. Our performance was a surprise gift from the bride to the groom (we snuck in posing as distant cousins), and it was wonderful to be part of her making him so very happy.

The wedding itself was lovely– the ceremony was performed by a pair of musicians from the Chicago area who wrote and performed a song just for the happy couple. The company was good, the food was excellent, the groom wore a morning coat and top hat, the fire dancers were amazing, and the cake (which I believe Mark baked himself) was based on the amazing Apollo 8 earthrise photo.

We performed four songs, requested by the couple. Kara and Sandry performed “Where I Come From,” and it was really special to watch the wedding couple gaze at each other and tear up happily at all the right places. All the women joined together on “Caravan” and on “Somebody Will,” split evenly between the two parts, with Beecher bringing in the audience on the final chorus. We also kicked off a small song circle just before we had to leave, using “Hearthfire,” in honor of the fire dancers who had performed earlier in the evening. We did a bit of an experiment, with Irina singing the melody most of the time, Kara playing the stranger/Odin and taking on the melody during those parts, and Emily doing the same for the son. It worked well, and we’ll definitely repeat it during some future performances.

Altogether, we were delighted to be able to be part of such an important moment in Mark and Barbara’s lives, and we hope that their whole life together will be as sweet and as musical as its beginning!

Once again, Sassafrass Boston will be performing at this upcoming Arisia!

The concert will be held from 8-10pm on Saturday, January 14th, 2012. This will be a joint concert: we will perform alternating sets and a few joint pieces with our friends Stranger Ways. Along with old favorites, the Sassafrass portion will feature the two latest songs from Sundown, “Abandoned” and “A New World,” both new to Arisia.

You will need a membership for the convention to attend the concert. You can register beforehand or purchase a day pass at the door. For more information, visit http://2012.arisia.org.

Vericoncert!

Songs in the Key of π

The Wedding Singers

Arisia 2012 concert