Therese Schroeder-Sheker - Blessings of the Road EP (2024)

During the course of her prodigious career as a harpist and singer, concert and recording artist Therese Schroeder-Sheker travelled across three continents, singing in eight languages, roaming every lane and thoroughfare, performing the literature of two distinctly different periods: medieval and late twentieth century. Despite what we may think or feel about past and present eras, their two margins have the shining essentials in common: love song, lament, prayer, and epic ballad. These genres are always fresh, startling and poignant.
Today, in contrast to her previous legacy which roams a wide distance of physical miles and cultural time periods, she presents a bird’s eye view of great intimacy. By zeroing in on traditional Scottish and Irish hymns and two chants from Divine Office, she centers the ultimate expression of the bardic mantle, the suite she composed upon the death of her mother, Nora’s Crown.
This recording Blessings of the Road presents the one and only collection the artist ever prepared that demonstrates something of the spirit of prescriptive music, normally delivered live at the bedside of the dying. Accompanied by the immensely lyrical cellist David Darling, this 2024 anthology returns, in many ways, to the spiritual vision in which Therese originally and unashamedly explored all things modal, melodic and Marian. Our Curve Blue release features a twenty-two page booklet framing the music within two of the artist’s most beloved themes: Cistercian spirituality and the creative artisanal wisdom of the Hebridean Islands.