Album Notes

Sara Banleigh dives into the traditional music of the British Isles to explore themes of love, lust, murder, revenge, suicide, and the supernatural. She chooses songs that express both the joy and terror of the human condition, drawing on material that is anywhere from 300- to 800-years-old. These songs have served as an oral record, as well as a warning and spiritual guide, for peoples throughout Scotland, Ireland, and England for hundreds of years.

Sara has selected a handful of songs from the great wealth of Irish and British folk tradition for her debut album, arranging the material for piano, and bringing in a tight-knit band of acoustic guitar and strings to round out the melodic layers and to help her tell these universal, and ultimately personal, stories.