There’s a particular quote from Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle that local singer Miriam Mason Martineau has always held close to her heart.
In the passage Carlyle asserts that music “leads us to the edge of the infinite”.
And that’s exactly where she wants to be.
“What I’ve been trying to do is something I’ve been curious about for a really long time, which is how can music in a concert setting include what it often does—entertaining and delighting people—but also use music, in the most blunt way of speaking, as prayer,” Mason Martineau told the Star.
Together with five fellow Kootenay musicians, she will be hosting two nights of devotional music from a variety of spiritual traditions at Touchstones Nelson on March 6 and 12.
The rest of the lineup includes Noémi Kiss, Kathleen Neudorf, Jeff Faragher, Adrian Wagner and Faye Mallet, who contributed collaboratively on creating some of the musical arrangements.
She said she had one theme in mind, as she was selecting compositions.
“My question is how can it express what can’t be expressed, but what also can’t remain silent?”
Mason Martineau said the title of the concert, Weaving Light, was chosen carefully. She considers the evening as an over-lapping of various spiritual traditions, including compositions from Buddhist, Christian and Sufi lineage.
“Music really does cross language and cultural barriers and it can express this yearning for something beyond that can really connect us with each other.”
Mason Martineau is particularly pleased to be playing at Touchstones, because she said the setting creates cathedral-type acoustics.
“I grew up in Switzerland and spent a lot of time in churches and chapels. You get incredible sounds in those stone buildings. I’ve lived here for 20 years and I was looking for a space with a similar acoustic resonance.”
She walked into the Touchstones space, sung a few lines, and knew she had the place.
“I was like ‘that’s it’. It’s like you’re bathing in sound. People can bathe in the music.”
Tickets for the first show on Friday are now sold out, but a second performance has been scheduled on Thursday, March 12 at 7:30 p.m.
Tickets are on sale at Otter Books and online at nextstepintegral.org