Sailing To Byzantium, by Christine Tobin

Sailing To Byzantium

by Christine Tobin

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Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
The CD has lovely packaging with artwork by Maxine Sutton. Contains all the poems by W B Yeats printed within. It was mixed and mastered by Chris Lewis and sounds fabulous!

Peter Quinn, Jazzwise Magazine
In this beautiful collection of songs based on the poetry of WB Yeats, vocalist Christine Tobin has created an unqualified masterpiece.

"There’s a kind of alchemy at work, particularly in how she uses her warmly distinctive voice, malleable, poised phrasing and impeccable intonation to get inside the material.” The Irish Times

"...Dublin-born Tobin, a talented composer as well as a glorious interpretative singer with a fabulously alluring voice, has carried off that rare feat of setting poems, in this case those of William Butler Yeats, to music and making the results sound like natural songs with emotional impact, melodic hooks and ecstatic refrains. The opening When You Are Old charms like a magnet, drawing the listener into a sound-world created by voice, piano, guitar, flute, cello and double bass that’s by turns yearning, bucolic, elegiac, apocalyptic and deliciously romantic, and draws on the folk and European art song traditions as much as Tobin’s jazz background. This is Tobin’s triumph, her greatest hour so far...”
The Herald Scotland
"Her voice, robust and subtle by turns but characterful throughout, is of course to the fore, but it’s her empathetic arrangements, crafted around each text with the skill of a watchmaker, which make this sonically impeccable disc unique. Do buy this, but also watch out for live dates.” BBC Music Magazine *****

"Tobin gets the combination just right, giving emphasis to Yeats’ imagery and emotions, highlighting the subtler nuances, and opening the poems up to offer a new experience. She does this so successfully, that it’s possible to forgive anyone who asks how Yeats has managed to write such beautiful lyrics to Tobin’s tunes.. There’s a timeless quality to the music and words on Sailing To Byzantium: a record that goes, as “The Lake Isle Of Innisfree” puts it, to “the deep heart’s core.” All About Jazz
"There’s a thrilling, dark timbre to Tobin’s voice that moves you like no other singer. She should be on a global stage rubbing shoulders with fellow troubadours like Cave, Mitchell and Cohen... It's a tribute to the quality of Tobin's writing that there are no weak spots in this excellent collection"” The Guardian****

"...Christine Tobin really transcends glib genre-fication. Her expressive range acknowledges finely acquired folk, jazz and 20th-century classical influences, which already sets her apart. And everything is shot through with an unmistakable refinement, free-spirited earthiness and giddy romanticism, this singer-songwriter is in a field of one." MOJO Music Magazine ****

Includes unlimited streaming of Sailing To Byzantium via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more. ... more

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Full Digital Discography

5

releases

Get all 5 Christine Tobin releases available on Bandcamp and save 15%.

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Returning Weather, PELT, A Thousand Kisses Deep, Sailing To Byzantium, and Tapestry Unravelled. , and , .

Purchasable with gift card

€34 EUR or more (15% OFF)

1.	When You Are Old 04:16	info	buy track
2.	The Lake Isle of Innisfree 01:35	info	buy track
3.	The Song of Wandering Aengus 05:03	info	buy track
4.	The Wild Swans at Coole 06:47	info	buy track
5.	The Fisherman 04:57	info	buy track
6.	The Pity Of Love 00:21	info	buy track
7.	The Second Coming 03:39	info	buy track
8.	In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Constance Markievicz 06:54	info	buy track
9.	What Then? 06:21	info	buy track
10.	Sailing to Byzantium 05:29	info	buy track
11.	Byzantium 05:28	info	buy track
12.	Long-legged Fly 05:27		buy track
13.	The White Birds 01:42		buy track

about

Chanting and enchanting, poetry and music have always been of equal importance to Tobin, both as singer and composer. The poems are chosen from Yeats’s early work through to his final collection. She was particularly drawn to the love poems such as When You Are Old, written with the unattainable love of his life Maud Gonne, in mind, and also his poems that celebrate the transformative power of art and his desire to find a deeper spiritual truth, as in Sailing To Byzantium and Long-legged Fly. Christine works with the poems on a deep intuitive level creating music that draws you into a world of unalloyed soulfulness, conjuring watercolour accompaniments on The Fisherman, and a hypnotic, prayer-like refrain on Sailing To Byzantium. The quiet power of Byrne’s reading of The Lake Isle of Innisfree over Tobin’s sparse, evocative piano accompaniment; brings great warmth and luminosity to the meaning. In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Constance Markievicz captures the spectral quality of friends in a world that has passed and Lockrane’s flute introduction on The Song of Wandering Aengus leads us into a mystical “hazel wood”. Apocalyptic disquiet is conveyed on The Second Coming by a menacing, repetitive 5/4 motif where the “blood dimmed tide is loosed” and culminates in an anarchic crescendo. Romantic and radical, Christine is a musical free spirit who blurs the lines to create her own unique style that manages to be both earthy and ethereal. The rich palette of harmony and colour draws on influences from folk, jazz and twentieth century classical, from Miles to Messiaen.

The CD "Sailing To Byzantium" (release date July 2012) includes special guest, renowned actor Gabriel Byrne reading three of the poems. Byrne’s presence on the album is of special significance to Christine as he was her teacher back in Dublin when she attended secondary school. Gabriel was the school’s Spanish teacher, but he also led drama classes after hours for students who showed a keen interest. His collaboration with Tobin on this recording follows a direct link to an inspirational time in her formative years when she attended, what was then, one of Dublin’s most unique schools. Yeats’s poems came into her life around this time too, when her first boyfriend used to read her When You Are Old, and a moonstruck Tobin imagined “the pilgrim soul” lay somewhere within.

credits

released July 2, 2012

Composer/Vocals - Christine Tobin
Words - W B Yeats
Artwork – Maxine Sutton
Cello – Kate Shortt
Double Bass – Dave Whitford
Engineer – Curtis Schwartz
Executive Producer – Christine Tobin, Gwilym Simcock, Les Curtis, Alan Walker
Flute – Gareth Lockrane (tracks: 3, 5, 9, 10, 13)
Guitar – Phil Robson
Music By – Christine Tobin
Piano – Christine Tobin (tracks: 2), Liam Noble (tracks: 1, 3-13)
Producer – Christine Tobin
Read By – Gabriel Byrne (tracks: 2, 6, 13)

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about

Christine Tobin

Irish born vocalist/composer Tobin is renowned for her unique rich voice & original compositional style. She has twelve highly acclaimed albums under her own name & four major awards under her belt. She can be junkyard blues philosopher, or snappy beat seductress, a conduit for exquisite zen-like harmonies, or reflective Americana. The Guardian described her sound as 'Tobin’s 24 carat voice’. ... more