Every now and then there are advantages to getting on a plane once a week.  Tonight I experienced one of them.

I am a fan of guitarist Muriel Anderson.  You’ve got to love a classical guitarist whose first influence was Doc Watson!  She can play anything…from classical to jazz to bluegrass.

So I was pleased and surprised when I saw on her Facebook page earlier this week that she would be playing something called BWI Live. At BWI Airport.   In Baltimore.  Among the baggage carousels and Hudson Books.  On April 7th.  The night I was returning from a day trip to Cleveland.  Through BWI!

So in the midst of a very busy day, week, month, season – you name it – I had a sublime evening sitting in the aforementioned baggage claim area listening to beautiful music with ten or fifteen other guitar aficionados.  Muriel Anderson shut out the noise of passing travelers, the cleaning staff, and God knows what else to showcase music from her most recent CD New World Flamenco and other examples of her recorded work.  She played a beautiful Vincent (from her collection of Harp Guitar duets with John Doan), charmed us all with a love song entitled Arioso, whipped through a fingerstyle version of Angeline the Baker (which I’ve never heard played with so many chords) coupled with Foggy Mountain Breakdown, and even indulged my request with the spirited Day Tripper (watch the wonderful video here.)  God, I love the bass figures she plays in that tune!

So I’ve gone to the YouTube archive and came up with Anderson playing a duet with Tommy Emmanuel on the Don McLean tune Vincent. As a duet, on harp guitar, or solo on the six string – as she played it tonight – this is a lovely, lovely tune by a world-class musician.  And I got to see her live at BWI!

Sublime indeed.  Enjoy.

More to come…

DJB