Ruth MacKenzie

GIG: As part of the Nordic Roots Festival, Ruth MacKenzie performs a concert version of her popular show, Kalevela: Dream of the Salmon Maiden, which packed the Southern Theater ten years ago. The show features a variety of traditional Scandinavian singing styles, including a method called kulning, a high-pitched, vibratoless, eerie-sounding technique used by shepherdesses to communicate to each other from great distances.

GREW UP: I grew up in Littleton, Colorado, a suburb of Denver. I used to ride my bike from my home into the foothills to stick my feet in Deer Creek on summer afternoons. That would be impossible now. Littleton is a city and my bike route is now a highway.

STARTED SINGING: I have sung my entire life. As a small girl, I would get up on a footstool and announce I wanted to sing a song for my family and then regale them with “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.”

MUSICAL FAMILY: My mother played the guitar and my father played the piano. My mother had wanted to be a singing cowgirl growing up, and my Dad wanted to be concert pianist. Ultimately, life turned out a little differently than planned. My father taught high school [algebra and calculus] and my mother was an English teacher. Nonetheless, music was played, sung, and listened to daily.

EARLY MUSICAL INFLUENCES: My earliest influences were a variety of folk singers found on a FolkWays album collection my mother had purchased. I loved Odetta, Ian and Sylvia, Joan Baez, and The Weavers. I’d lock myself up in my bedroom, playing my guitar and singing “Midnight Special” along with Odetta. Promoting a concert a few years back, I had the opportunity to meet her. That was a great day.

ON DEVELOPING VOCAL TECHNIQUES FOR SALMON MAIDEN: I worked with several different singers from the Nordic countries, particularly Finland, developing my skill in hard-voice singing, kulning, and the folk song repertoire. Some of the vocal work in the show is very traditional, other parts are vocal exploration using Nordic singing styles as a springboard. The emotional arc of the story determined so much of the sound and songs I used.

ON THE EVOLUTION OF SALMON MAIDEN: When I first did the show I concentrated on just one runo, or poem story, of Aino, the maiden from the Kalevala. In subsequent showings, I chose a longer version, which added complexity and depth to Aino’s character and others in the story. [The Nordic Roots Festival] performance will be different in that it is a concert version of the piece: song and storytelling. In a way, this performance model will be quite traditional. In essence, runo singing is storytelling through song.

CURRENT PROJECTS: I’m creating an Advent concert called Theotokos, for two choirs—Mila Vocal Ensemble and Unity Singers—and myself, exploring the story of Mary, the mother of God. Using Christmas music from around the world, I am hoping to retell the story of the Nativity as the renewal of creation—connecting theology, ecology, and our everyday lives. I am also working on a theater project called American Psalm, about my great uncle, Grant Wood, the painter.

IN HER CD PLAYER NOW: I’m listening to Emmy Lou Harris’s Red Dirt Girl, Kitka’s Wintersongs, Marianne Faithful’s 20th-century Blues, Patty Griffin’s Impossible Dream, and Sir John Tavener’s Ikon of Eros.

LITTLE KNOWN FACT: My step-grandmother was the model for the woman in the painting American Gothic.

CATCH HER ACT: 10th Anniversary Concert of Kalevala: Dream of the Salmon Maiden, Cedar Cultural Center, 416 Cedar Ave. S., 612-338-2674