Grand
Traditionalists- Jay Unger and Molly Mason
by
Peter Aaron
If
you live in the Hudson Valley, it’s hard to escape the presence
of Jay Ungar and Molly Mason—not that anyone drawn to authentically
moving music would ever want to. Whether it’s through the
duo’s monthly “Dancing on the Air” broadcast on
WAMC, their frequent guest appearances on NPR’s “A Prairie
Home Companion,” long-running Ashokan Fiddle and Dance Workshop
camps, Wednesday-night jam sessions at New World Home Cooking in
Saugerties, or via the countless dances and concerts they perform
year round as a twosome or with their larger Swingology band, it
seems like Ungar and Mason’s stirring sounds are always echoing
through the same Catskill Mountains the couple calls home. In 1990,
however, the pair’s popularity was extended far beyond our
region when filmmaker Ken Burns tapped Ungar’s profoundly
poignant “Ashokan Farewell” as the theme to his documentary
series The Civil War. The program went on to win Grammy Awards for
both its director and its soundtrack, and Ungar’s haunting
air was also nominated for an Emmy.
“It’s
really weird, how everything happened with that song,” says
the soft-spoken, mustachioed Ungar. "Before Molly and I started
working mainly as a duo, we were in a band called Fiddle Fever.
When that band was making its last album in 1984, I had already
written ‘Ashokan Farewell’ but it didn’t even
have a name yet and we weren’t planning to record it. But
when we were almost done with the record, we decided it needed another
slow tune. Russ Barenberg, the guitarist, said, ‘Hey, Jay,
let’s try that new waltz of yours.’"
“So
we ended up recording it and it sounded great,” continues
the fiddler-mandolinist in the basement office of the couple’s
West Saugerties home... CONTINUE...
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