Best / Boland / Joy Coasting Trade: A Performance For Three Voices CD

\"Coasting Trade\" follows the voyage of a Yankee trading schooner, circumnavigating the island of Newfoundland sometime after 1865. As the vessel puts in at various ports, the lyrical narratives weave back and forth through a century of change while the 19th century sailing directions remain timeless. A smuggler who studies angels, a woman who knits a stove, green martyrs, a homesick immigrant, and a biologist studying the sexual characeristics of caplin all come to the attention of the navigator before he turns southward, to the joy of glad returning. \"Coasting Trade\", a performance for three voices by Robin McGrath with navigation notes adapted from \"Sailing Directions for the Island of Newfoundland\" by J.S. Hobbes (1865)was produced for Rattling Books by Chris Brookes and performed (in order of appearance) by Robert Joy, Rick Boland and Anita Best. Recorded and produced with soundscape recordings by Chris Brookes. Audio Book Reviews: From AudioFile Magazine: In a performance of less than an hour, producer Chris Brookes and poet Robin McGrath transport the listener to a Yankee schooner circling Newfoundland in the late nineteenth century. The production, a Canadian tapestry for the ears, is beautifully embellished with sound effects that capture the waves, ship sounds, and local fauna. Robert Joy, Rick Boland, and Anita Best bring a lyrical beauty to this \"Performance for Three Voices.\" McGrath provides fleeting glimpses into the lives of an immigrant, a biologist, a smuggler, and Newfoundland locals scratching a life out of the rugged terrain. The short performance is superb, with the rich voices of Joy, Boland, and Best meshing into a melody against the harmony of background sounds. H.L.S. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, MaineArtist Bios:Robin McGrath (author)Robin McGrath is the author of numerous books, including Trouble and Desire, a collection of short stories, Escaped Domestics, a book of poems, Hoist Your Sails and Run a children’s book, and the novel Donovan’s Station. She has published close to two hundred pieces in magazines such as Beaver, Inuit Art Quarterly, Parchment, TickleAce, Fiddlehead and Room of One’s Own. McGrath is a regular contributor to CBC Radio, has written and narrated three video scripts, and in 1999 won the Henry Fuerstenberg Poetry Prize, one of the Canadian Jewish book awards. Her first play, A Mountain of Shoes, was staged in March of 2002 in St. John’s. Born in Newfoundland, Robin McGrath earned a doctorate from the University of Western Ontario and conducted research for 22 years in the Canadian Arctic on Inuit Literature and culture. She currently resides in Goose Bay, Labrador where she writes full time. Chris Brookes (Producer)Chris Brookes is an independent radio producer whose award-winning programs (eg. Peabody Award 2006, Prix Marulic 2006, Prix Italia 2005, Gabriel Award 2003) have been heard on public radio in the U.S.A, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, England, The Netherlands and Canada. He has directed and produced documentaries for Canadian network television, and his television writing has been nominated for the Gemini award. He is also a published author and playwright, and has taught documentary feature-making and storytelling at radio festivals and workshops across North America and Europe. Brookes currently directs the production company Battery Radio with studios at the bottom of the cliff where Marconi received the first trans-Atlantic wireless message in St. John\'s, Newfoundland. Performers:Anita BestAnita Best grew up on Merasheen Island in Placentia Bay which was abandoned during Newfoundland\'s community re-settlement program, under Joey Smallwood. This early life in one of Newfoundland\'s most culturally rich regions inspired a passion to preserve and interpret the traditions which seemed to be departing with the disappearing communities. Initially she began professional work as a classroom teacher, oral historian and folklorist and eventually incorpor