 Bird & Mandrell Michael Mandrell’s hybrid guitar style reveals a guitarist of eclectic sensibilities and delicate technique. His music circles the globe in imagistic compositions.
Jenny Bird has been called "the most passionate performer in the new folk/rock genre." They are super together.
Click "Read More" for CD Review and Sanctuary Tour Info:
Holding Each Other Up
A review of Sanctuary - A new CD by Jenny Bird and Michael Mandrell
By Mirabhai Starr
There are probably a handful of songs we could each name that have changed our lives, or at least enriched them. Sanctuary, the new collaborative recording by Jenny Bird and Michael Mandrell, offers a bounty of such life-changing musical treasures.
As the title suggests, this is a record about solace, safety and holiness. While inspired by the wisdom teachings of the world’s spiritual traditions, however, it is not religious music. It is music that celebrates the sacred as we discover it in the midst of our daily lives. It is about the sanctuary we find inside ourselves along our individual paths of healing and awakening and between each other in community.
Jenny Bird, long beloved by the Taos community and all over the world, continues to deepen and grow as a singer-songwriter. This is her ninth recording over a career that spans twenty years.
The song Hold up Each Other reflects Jenny’s maturity and passion. It is a song grounded in the suffering of the world yet entirely devoid of cynicism. It acknowledges that sometimes events occur that bring us to our knees and that our only hope is to extend our hands to each other in our brokenness and bear witness to transformational power of our shattering.
The strings part in Hold up Each Other, composed and performed by Ed Caner, is heart-wrenchingly beautiful. Adrienne Braswell and Kevin Mulligan, gifted singer-songwriters in their own right, add exquisite harmony vocals to several of Jenny’s songs. Dave Bryant, currently on tour with Otmar Leibert, plays percussion on his hand-built drum. Page Williams, bass player from the historic Birdband, contributes his fresh warm tones to the rich tapestry of this collection.
Jenny’s version of the Saint Teresa Prayer takes the timeless words, in both Spanish and English, of the famous sixteenth-century Spanish mystic, and creates a haunting mantra of hope in the face of despair. Jenny has truly captured the ancient spirit of contemplative prayer in this piece. Listeners report playing that song over and over again, feeling profoundly fed and comforted by the music and the message.
Michael’s instrumental guitar pieces are equally powerful tools of transformation. His music ranges from exuberant and joyful to lilting, melting, other-worldly. The listener can picture Michael’s long fingers leaping over the frets and the strings in a seemingly effortless dance. Jenny’s free-form vocal accompaniment to two of Michael’s songs reveals a glimpse of the wordless intimacy between these two great musicians.
It is the special alchemy between Michael and Jenny that helps transmute the raw substance of our painful lives into gold and creates a space of sanctuary. Audiences have been reveling in the magic of the Jenny Bird-Michael Mandrell collaboration for ten years on stage. This is their first joint recording. Both musicians play guitars lovingly hand-built by Tony Sutherland.
It is worth noting that Sanctaury was recorded entirely “off-the-grid” in Omar Rane’s solar powered Tone Palace, surrounded by the art works of the late great Bill Rane.
More information at jennybird.com and michaelmandrell.com
SANCTUARY TOUR
INFORMATION
Saturday, August 26
House Concert
4201 Menford Lane
7:30 pm
Santa Fe, New Mexico
RSVP 505 660 2171
 Sanctuary Compact Disc
Milagros
7:30 pm
Alamosa, Colorado
719 480 9162
Saturday, September 9
Crestone School House
7:30 pm
Crestone, Colorado
719 256 5215
Sunday, September 10
performing with the band
Taos Center for the Arts, TCA
7:30 pm
Taos, New Mexico
505 758 2052
Friday, September 22
7:00 pm
Greely, Colorado
970 351 6751
 Sancutary Tour
House Concert
7:30 pm
Denver, Colorado
720 872 1866,
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970 590 6978,
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Sunday, September 24
Unity of Boulder
9:00 am and 11:00 am
Boulder, Colorado
303 442 1411
Sunday, September 24
Frisco Friends of Acoustic Music
6:30 pm
Frisco, Colorado
Friday, September 29
Sandy's House
7:30 pm
Eugene, Oregon
541 342 6266,
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Saturday, September 30
Dancing Trees Sanctuary
7:30 pm
Newburg, Oregon
503 537 0749,
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Sunday, October 1
People of the Heart
7:00 pm
Battle Ground, Washington
360 666 4942
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