Summer 2010

Curtis & Loretta Receive Grant from State Arts Board

We've been awarded an Arts Tour Minnesota grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board! This grant will help fund our tour of 19 venues across the state in September and October, plus spring of 2011, presenting our program Minnesota Heritage in Song. This entertaining and educational concert is made up entirely of songs Minnesotans sang here in earlier times. It grew out of The Minnesota Heritage Songbook, a Minnesota Sesquicentennial Commission project that we were involved with in 2008. Click here to see the Calendar with locations, dates, and times, or here to download an ad with full dates.

Dressed in 1800s costumes, we'll make history come alive with songs from our latest CD, Our Heritage in Song. Along with harmonies, we'll use period instruments, including banjo, celeste (a charming antique keyboard that plays bells), folk harp, mandocello, harmonica, and guitar. Sing along as you learn about Minnesota's history, and the music that helped shape our great state 150 years ago!

There's Lincoln's campaign song (reportedly written by a Minnesotan!), a children's circle game, immigrants' songs, and a rollicking voyageur song, along with songs of lumberjacks, farmers, homesteaders, and Civil War soldiers. In between songs, we'll give snippets of early Minnesota history, and explore how 1800s issues and sentiments are still relevant today. Please join us! There will be time to speak with us to ask questions and make comments after each concert.

A big thank you to the people of Minnesota, who voted to raise the sales tax 3/8 of one percent in November 2008 to fund arts and culture, clean water, and parks and trails. This new arts and cultural heritage fund will enable us to reach more Minnesotans than ever before with our Minnesota Heritage in Song concert.

Here's what one reviewer had to say:

"It's a sweeping tapestry of life and times 150 years ago, with topical threads that remain relevant today, specifically those about hard times and the poignant 'When This Cruel War Is Over.' As expected, Curtis & Loretta nail every one: His rich tenor entwines with her sparkling soprano for thrilling harmonies, while they adeptly accompany themselves on vintage stringed instruments." .... Critics' Picks, Rick Mason, City Pages newspaper

Visit the Minnesota Heritage in Song Blog and let us know what you think!

Fall 2009

Curtis & Loretta Release "Our Heritage in Song"

Come join Curtis & Loretta as they celebrate the vibrant music that helped shape Minnesota!! Curtis & Loretta release their new CD, Our Heritage in Song, at Hobgoblin Music in Red Wing on November 21, and at the Cedar in Minneapolis on January 24

This radiant album is made up entirely of songs their ancestors would have been singing here in Minnesota in 1858, when it was a brand new state. These traditional musical gems highlight the married couple's old world charm as never before. Dressed in 1800s costumes, the duo will make history come alive, as their tight vocal harmonies resonate on such poignant songs as "The Farmer is the Man," the tragic lumber-era ballad "The Jam on Gerry's Rocks," and "Lincoln and Liberty," which was Abraham Lincoln's campaign song. This song helped make Lincoln the first-ever President to earn the electoral votes of the new state of Minnesota! Curtis & Loretta's vocal harmonies intertwine seamlessly with instruments one would have heard right here in the mid-1800s, including folk harp, mandocello, clawhammer banjo, celeste (a charming music-box sounding antique keyboard), harmonica, and more.

This superb recording grew out of a project created for the Minnesota Sesquicentennial last year. The Friends of Fort Snelling and Bob Waltz, with a grant from the Sesquicentennial Commission, published The Minnesota Heritage Songbook, a collection of folk songs either collected in or illustrating the history of Minnesota. Curtis & Loretta recorded 13 of the songs on the accompanying CD-ROM (the book was sent to schools and state parks across the state). The duo performed these songs at the Minnesota Heritage Songbook "book release" concert at Fort Snelling, and at the Sesquicentennial Big Top Chautauqua Tent at the State Fair.

Now, these 13 songs, along with two 1800s sea shanties, are being released on Curtis & Loretta's own album Our Heritage in Song, which was produced and designed by Fred and Dorothy Waltz.

Inside Bluegrass (MBOTMA's monthly magazine) says, "This is truly an album like no other.... This will probably be the only recording of its kind -- at least until Minnesota turns two hundred."

Spring 2009

We have sad news to report. On Wednesday, March 26, 2009, Luba Tryszynska-Frederick passed away. Loretta wrote a song about her titled "Angel of Bergen-Belsen," and recorded it on our 2006 CD, "Just My Heart For You." She was an amazing, courageous woman who saved 54 children from the Nazis while she herself was a prisoner in Bergen-Belsen during World War II.

She heard crying outside her barracks one freezing night, and looked out to see 54 children who had been dumped in the snow to die. She took them all inside, and begged a guard to let her take care of them. Miraculously, she kept 52 of them alive till the end of the war several months later. There were no food or even drinking water rations for children, but she stole, and did whatever she had to to keep them alive. After the war she became known as the Angel of Bergen-Belse. You can read more about her story, and our first trip to visit her here.

Read about the Luba Tour * Read about the Angel of Bergen-Belsen

We were honored to know this real-life heroine. We first read about her in a newspaper article in 2000. After Loretta wrote the song, we searched for her, and found her living in a suburb of Miami. Luba invited us to come visit, and we made four trips to Florida between 2003 and 2006. We stayed with her on the first three trips. She was the perfect hostess, feeding us, teaching us Yiddish songs, taking us to Bingo night at the retirement village where she lived, and getting Loretta to wear perfume and jewelry. A very outspoken woman, she didn't like the fact that Loretta was going to a gig unadorned!

We will miss Luba terribly. Since we first made contact with her, we've called her every couple of weeks. She was not absolutely sure of her age,having been born in a very small village in Poland, but since she said she was 23 when she saved the children, we figure she was about 88 when she died. Luba lived a long life, but the last few years, she was in ill health. We trust she has found peace now. I'm sure she's up in heaven singing and making people eat! The Angel of Bergen-Belsen has taken her place among the angels.

Fall 2008: Curtis & Loretta Christmas CD

We're very happy to announce the re-release of our holiday recording, "Christmastide with Curtis & Loretta." First released as a cassette tape in 1991, it was recorded live in the studio, with no overdubs. It was out of print for several years. Now, it's been digitally remastered, and born again as a CD! There's twelve of your favorite Christmas carols on it, with sweet vocal harmonies and traditional turn-of-the-century instruments. Curtis plays mandocello, mandolin and guitar. Loretta plays folk harp, guitar, and mandolin. And on the lighter, Santa Claus songs, Loretta plays an awesome little acoustic keyboard called a celeste. Invented in the early 1800s, it sounds like bells when played, and it's perfect for Santa Claus songs! Curtis joins in here on harmonica. Like all our recordings, the mood travels from poignant, to inspiring, to downright fun.

So check out this CD, and be sure to sing along!

Summer 2008: Celebrating Minnesota's Musical Heritage

What better way to celebrate summer than to meet where the Rivers meet -- and enjoy a picnic supper, accompanied by songs that were sung by our grandparents? Join us at the junction of the Mississippi and the Minnesota for beautiful scenery and beautiful music. Curtis and Loretta will present songs from the new Minnesota Heritage Songbook on Thursday, August 14 on Picnic Island at Fort Snelling State Park. This Sesquicentennial event celebrates our first European immigrants; Minnesota's Civil War soldiers; our loggers, miners, and farmers; and all the other people who settled Minnesota.

Make your plans now to join us at 6:30 pm on Thursday, August 14 with your picnic supper for an exciting evening hearing and singing along with the songs of our ancestors. This family-hour Sesquicentennial concert and the Minnesota Heritage Songbook are funded by the Minnesota Sesquicentennial Commission and the Friends of Fort Snelling. A State Park sticker is required for admission to the park, but otherwise the event is free. Information: 612-725-2724.

For more information about the Friends of Fort Snelling, visit the www.FortSnelling.org.. For more about Fort Snelling State Park, visit State Park Web Site.

News Winter 2008

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These 5 songs are from a concert we did at The Back Room at the Barton Arts Center in Great Bend, Kansas in November.

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