Lisa Reagan – What We Need is Here
Lisa Reagan’s new album What We Need Is Here, is ten classic poems by noted authors, including Wendell Berry, Yeats, two by Robert Frost, Keats, Shakespeare, and William Wordsworth set to quality music. Lisa composed the music and melodies for each of the poems. Jamshied Sharifi (Tony-award winning producer/orchestrator) produced this project. The album also features Seamus Egan, Celtic musician and founding member of Solas.
“The Owl” opens the album with strings and merriment, and then solemnity in “show me the pathways of silver.” Lisa’s vocals are operatic. Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” is piano and strings and the melodious accordion, and we can see the host of daffodils beside the lake, beneath the trees.
“Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day” is enchanting choir harmonies a la Shakespeare and more stately and majestic arrangements.
“I go and lie down where the wood drake rests” and we are fully immersed the natural world. This is the first of two Wendell Berry poems, “The Peace of Wild Things.” Rest and be free. A lyric line for Wendell Berrys poem “Wild Geese” is the album’s title, and also the song.
Robert Frost “Whose woods there are I think I know, his house is in the village though,” from “Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Day.” And then another by Frost is represented too: “The Road Not Taken.”
Rich with classic instrumentation and Lisa’s courtly vocal delivery, this project is poetry focused on the grounding power of nature. The cover art was courtesy of Paul Wyse, an artist with are in both the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian and the Canadian House of Commons collections.
What Lin-Manuel Miranda did for popular culture with Hamilton, Lisa Reagan has done here for nature, poetry and music lovers who will be inspired to some renewed interest in classic poetry and memorization as they sing along, and wonder at nature itself in its immense glory.
Find more details and information about Lisa Reagan here on her website: https://lisareagan.com/
Enjoy our previous coverage here: Video Premiere: Lisa Reagan Wild Geese
Musicians on this album are Lisa Reagan on vocals, Mark Copely on electric and acoustic guitars; Benjamin Wittman on drums and percussion; Peter Godard on piano, Séamus Egan on whistle; Christopher Layer on Uilleann and Highland pipes; Paul Woodiel on hurdy-gurdy; Kirsten Agresta Copely on harp; Peter Godart on piano; Jamshied Sharifi on keyboards, accordion, vocals and bass; Inna Dudukina on durum; Peter Eldridge on choir; and The Satori Winds.
Lisa Reagan – What We Need Is Here track listing
The Owl – Arianrhod Bel-Moore
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud – William Wordsworth
Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day – William Shakespeare
The Peace of Wild Things – Wendell Berry
Stopping by Woods On a Snowy Evening – Robert Frost
The Road Not Taken – Robert Frost
The Two Trees – William Butler Yeats
Bright Star – John Keats
He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven – William Butler Yeats
The Wild Geese – Wendell Berry