Three Notch'd Road: Shining Shore
Three Notch'd Road

It would be hard to imagine a more compelling argument on behalf of Three Notch'd Road than Shining Shore: Music of Early America, the outfit's third album. Comprised of Artistic Director Fiona Hughes (baroque violin, harp, alto vocals), Steuart Pincombe (baroque cello), Dominic Giardino (historical clarinet), Peter Walker (bass vocals, harp, cittern, Appalachian dulcimer, English guittar), and soprano Michelle Pincombe, the Virginia Baroque Ensemble charms listeners with seventeen diverse pieces as they might have sounded during the late-seventeenth to mid-nineteenth centuries when they were written.

The group named itself after a colonial route through central Virginia, but the quintet's engaging performances have the capacity to appeal far beyond any one locale. While Three Notch'd Road presents its material faithfully to the period when it was created, their treatments are in no way tired history lessons; on the contrary, in investing performances of their repertoire with vitality, integrity, and affection, the music feels as fresh as anything written today. Folk ballads, dances, dirges, hymns, marches, and more appear during the fifty-three-minute recording, each one meticulously rendered and delivered with conviction. While some songs deal with death and mortality, hope and resilience are also part of the thematic package.

The release enchants from the moment Henry Purcell's spirited “Wells Humour” inaugurates it until the title composition caps it sixteen songs later. “Behold a Lovely Vine,” the first of four compositions from The Christian Harmony (New Hampshire, 1805) by Vermont farmer Jeremiah Ingalls, adds vocals to the quintet's lustrous instrumental presentation, and magnificently too when the singing's shared by the ensemble's soprano, alto, and bass singers. Two centuries collapse for the interweaving of "Remember, O Thou Man” (from Thomas Ravenscroft's 1611 folk-song collection Melismata) and “Idumea” (from Ananias Davisson's 1835 Southern Harmony), with the contrast between the voices of Michelle Pincombe and Peter Walker maximized to powerful effect.

Whereas the quintet invests its delicate chamber rendering of Handel's “Dead March” with stately elegance, its handling of Oliver Shaw's “Jefferson's March” is spritely and uplifting, and graceful counterpoint between baroque violin, baroque cello, and cittern makes Thomas Baltzar's “John Come Kiss Me" all the more delightful. Offsetting light-hearted pieces are solemn ones such as “Liberty Tree,” which finds Walker, accompanied by baroque cello only, emoting passionately about the symbolic elm tree. Even darker is “Lady of York,” a song that falls within the “Cruel Mother” murder-ballad tradition of the British Isles and is suitably chilling in Three Notch'd Road's rendition. Death is also confronted in Jeremiah Ingalls' "Farewell Hymn” when moving vocal performances by Pincombe and Walker are amplified by the group's strings and clarinet. The wistful “Shining Shore” ends the release on a stirring note when Pincombe's lovely voice and the refined chamber timbres of the group grace the album a final time.

Pieces by well-known and less familiar names appear side-by-side, yet they all work together to make a strong cumulative impression. One of the recording's major strengths is its balanced presentation of vocal and instrumental songs; as pleasing as it is to listen to those featuring the group's singers, the instrumentals prove as rewarding. As Three Notch'd Road states in the release booklet, one of its goals in making the recording was “to open to the listener beauties of a time and place far from our own, both strange and strangely familiar.” Consider said mission resoundingly accomplished.

June 2022