Directed by Christina Kennedy, this program is a lively and evocative journey across the sea—featuring folk traditions, sea chanteys, and choral works that capture the motion, mystery, and spirit of life on and in the water. The Sounds of Stow Chorus will be joined by The Artemis Circle Choral Project for a shared program of rich and varied repertoire.

We are also delighted to welcome guest musicians Keith Murphy and Becky Tracy, who will offer their own sets of traditional music and lead the audience in a spirited sea chantey singalong.

This concert will support the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the world’s leading independent non-profit dedicated to ocean science, technology, education, and communication.

Becky Tracy & Keith Murphy

Becky Tracy and Keith Murphy are dynamic performers of traditional music from Newfoundland, Quebec, Ireland, France and beyond. Becky’s fiddling pulses through tasteful arrangements of dance tunes and resonates with beauty on traditional slow airs. Keith’s gentle and expressive singing in English and French is balanced by the drive and power of his guitar playing and foot percussion. Combined, they produce a range and richness of sound that is striking for a duo. Their playing is seamless, the result of years of playing together and touring across the U.S., Canada and in Europe. Their repertoire also includes Keith’s original compositions (many of which are included in the Black Isle Music tune collection). He is a prolific tunesmith with a writing style strongly based on traditional dance music. This music is elegantly represented in their duo recording, Golden, released in early 2020. Several of Keith’s tunes were included in the Ken Burns series on the Roosevelts as they were recorded on Becky’s solo recording, Evergreen. Keith and Becky were two thirds of the popular Vermont trio Nightingale and are veterans of several other bands including Childsplay and Assembly (Keith) and Wild Asparagus (Becky). They can be heard on recordings of all these bands and many others. 

Christina Kennedy, Assistant Director

Active in the Sounds of Stow community since 2008, Christina Kennedy has been teaching professionally for over twenty-five years in a variety of settings, from music studios, church basements, elementary classrooms, and middle school choral rooms to college recital halls. She holds advanced degrees in performance and choral conducting, and she is the founder and artistic director of The Artemis Circle Choral Project.  Currently serving as children’s choir and handbell choir director at North Parish of North Andover, Christina also co-founded and directed the All Together Now Chorus, an intergenerational group of singers aged three to seventy, and the Middlesex Children’s Chorale, a treble chorus based in Westford.  Additionally, she sang as soprano in Synergy, an a cappella vocal quartet, and as a “sopralto” with a touring choir that made the rounds of cathedrals in England.  She is currently working toward certification in the McClosky Vocal Technique and is a student in the voice studio of Jay D. Lane. Working with excellent teachers and colleagues throughout her life has taught her that music is far more than producing sound from notes on a page — that, among many other attributes, it is a way to connect with the past, with her own community, and with others around the world.