Just as solstice celebrations pre-date Christmas*, the Eighth Step’s venerable Sing Solstice! predates most other area seasonal celebrations. Since 1996, the two duos Kim & Reggie Harris and Magpie (Terry Leonino and Greg Artzner) have celebrated Sing Solstice! at the Eighth Step, originally in its first home in Albany’s First Presbyterian Church. On Sunday, they sing together in the Eighth Step at Proctors GE Theater (432 State St., Schenectady).
Kim and Reggie Harris, left, with Magpie; Greg Artzner and Terry Leonino. Photo supplied
All have been Eighth Step favorites for decades; Leonino playing harmonica, guitar and dulcimer; Reggie Harris and Artzner playing guitar and Kim Harris playing percussion. All four sing, as duos, or all together.
Sing Solstice! celebrates renewal and kinship in the turning of the seasons. Over the centuries winter solstice celebrations came to include Yule, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa & more around the world. All celebrate the lengthening of days and sunlight’s return with the promise of spring, and most of them have produced celebratory songs.
Kim & Reggie Harris sing in the musical language of blues, Gospel and folk traditions, first performing in Philadelphia churches and schools where they sang to educate and to inspire. They’ve recorded many albums, including several with Magpie.
Inspired by the same traditions and activist spirit, Magpie makes music with meaning as well as melody, recording a dozen-plus albums that shine clear, true light on our political, social and cultural history.
As they have for years, the Pokingbrook Morris Dancers also perform Sunday, opening Sing Solstice! in costumes and steps of England’s Cotswold region.
Show time is 7:30 p.m., doors 7. $26 advance, $28 at the door; $45 gold circle (two front rows, center). www.8thstep.org 518-346-6204. Free parking in the Broadway garage.
- Solstice celebrations may have begun around a neolithic monument built about 3,200 BC in Newgrange, Ireland. It’s aligned with the winter solstice sunrise when rising sun light illuminates carvings on an inside wall for 17 minutes. Stonehenge, identically aligned, was built about 200 years later.
- The Catholic Church in Rome began celebrating Christmas on Dec. 25 in 336 AD, the reign of Emperor Constantine.
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