Beth Patterson
Encyclopedia
Music of Ireland
Irish Music is the generic term for music that has been created in various genres on the island of Ireland.The indigenous music of the island is termed Irish traditional music. It has remained vibrant through the 20th, and into the 21st century, despite globalizing cultural forces...
folk
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
and Celtic musician. Combining traditional Irish, Celtic and folk ballads with Cajun, world-beat and progressive rock influences, her own creative songwriting and a unique sense of humor, Patterson's wit, charm, and beauty are as memorable as her powerful music.
A native of Lafayette, Louisiana
Lafayette, Louisiana
Lafayette is a city in and the parish seat of Lafayette Parish, Louisiana, United States, on the Vermilion River. The population was 120,623 at the 2010 census...
, Patterson began her professional career in her teens as a classical oboist
Oboe
The oboe is a double reed musical instrument of the woodwind family. In English, prior to 1770, the instrument was called "hautbois" , "hoboy", or "French hoboy". The spelling "oboe" was adopted into English ca...
and a Cajun bass player. She spent a year studying traditional Irish music and ethnomusicology at University College Cork in Ireland, where she began to experiment with musical fusion. She later finished her bachelor's degree in Music Therapy from Loyola University New Orleans
Loyola University New Orleans
Loyola University New Orleans is a private, co-educational and Jesuit university located in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. Originally established as Loyola College in 1904, the institution was chartered as a university in 1912. It bears the name of the Jesuit patron, Saint Ignatius of Loyola...
. Today her preferred instrument is the Irish bouzouki
Irish bouzouki
The Irish bouzouki is a development of the octave mandolin adapted for Irish traditional and other folk music from the late 1960s onward.-Adoption for Celtic music:...
, a tear-shaped eight-string instrument of Greek origin that became popular in Irish music in the 1960s. She plays a 10-string version as well.
She was a founding member of the ensemble The Poor Clares, who debuted at the New Orleans Jazz Festival to rave reviews. The Poor Clares' albums include Change of Habit and Songs for Midwinter, distributed nationally on the Centaur label. Since then, Patterson has released four albums, on the Little Blue Men Records label, include two studio productions, the somewhat more traditionally-oriented but still musically eclectic Hybrid Vigor, the world-beat and progressive-rock
Progressive rock
Progressive rock is a subgenre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s as part of a "mostly British attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility." John Covach, in Contemporary Music Review, says that many thought it would not just "succeed the pop of...
-influenced Take Some Fire, and the 2005 live album, Caught in the Act. Her new 2009 release, On Better Paths, is the most daring, crossing boundaries of form and genre even further. The recording received a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Folk Album. She has also played on and produced other albums, most recently (2005) on the album Orin by the Breton
Breton language
Breton is a Celtic language spoken in Brittany , France. Breton is a Brythonic language, descended from the Celtic British language brought from Great Britain to Armorica by migrating Britons during the Early Middle Ages. Like the other Brythonic languages, Welsh and Cornish, it is classified as...
progressive-folk group Tornaod. She has over 90 recordings to her credit.
She was a regular performer at O'Flaherty's Irish Pub in New Orleans's famed French Quarter, until Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was a powerful Atlantic hurricane. It is the costliest natural disaster, as well as one of the five deadliest hurricanes, in the history of the United States. Among recorded Atlantic hurricanes, it was the sixth strongest overall...
hit at the end of August 2005; O'Flaherty's has not reopened at its original site, and at last report will not reopen in the future, but Patterson has since begun playing regularly at other New Orleans venues, particularly Cafe Negril on Frenchmen Street, and Carrollton Station in the Riverbend on Willow Street. She has also toured in Canada, France, Germany, Ireland and Belgium, as well as much of the United States. She is especially a favorite of Celtic music fans in the Washington, D.C. area.
In addition to her solo pursuits, Beth has also returned to the bass. She has been performing regularly with New Orleans-based John Lisi & Delta Funk, in which her fiance, CJ Solomon, plays drums. Patterson and Solomon also have a new band, Potent Bathers. They're writing together and play most of the instruments on a 2010 five-song release, EP ominous!, produced by Solomon. The project is adult contemporary pop drawing from different genres, very different from Beth's solo work.
Beth was mentioned in the novel Dragons Wild (both thanked as a test reader and mentioned briefly in the plot) by late sci-fi/fantasy author Robert Asprin.
Film credits include the motion pictures Lucinda's Spell, The One-Eyed King (starring William Baldwin and Armand Assante), and most recently Mike Judge's Extract (on Mirimax), starring Jason Bateman, Mila Kunis, and Ben Affleck.
Beth Patterson endorses Infiniti Oboe Reeds and the Ebow.