ShelleyPosen.com Bio

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SHELLEY POSEN — A MUSICAL BIOGRAPHY

Toronto : Early Music

Shelley grew up in Toronto during the 1950s. As a wee tot, he avidly took in the glorious mishmash of music that was in the Posen family phonograph cabinet: Madam Butterfly and The Weavers, “Teddy Bears’ Picnic” and The Lonesome Train, songs from Snow White and Paul Robeson. His mum made singing a natural part of everyday life and Jewish holidays. He began singing in public early in life and, typically, in dissimilar circles and styles. He performed as youth cantor at a neighbourhood synagogue and attended National Music Camp in Interlochen, Michigan, where he majored in choir and operetta, singing everything from Handel and Hayden oratorios to chorus and solo roles in Gilbert and Sullivan.

In high school, beguiled by Pete Seeger’s banjo, Shelley learned to play that instrument, plus guitar (he learned to fingerpick guitar by watching Joan Baez’s fingers through binoculars as she played a concert at Massey Hall), concertina, and autoharp and took part in the Toronto folk boom of the 1960s. He performed in hootenannies at the Riverboat coffeehouse and led singsongs and campfire programs at summer camps. As an undergraduate, he toured with the University of Toronto Chorus and Hart House Glee Club, and continued performing folk music in an ever widening circle of coffeehouses and festivals in Canada and the U.S. Shelley was the featured performer opening night at Toronto's well known Fiddler's Green folk club.

Newfoundland Trad and Bluegrass

By then, Shelley's encounters with traditional music at festivals and folk clubs had refocused his sense of musical purpose. In 1970, he began graduate studies in Folklore at Memorial University of Newfoundland. He absorbed the music of fishermen singing in their kitchens, and of the Irish and country music entertainers in popular nightspots. He earned part of his tuition performing in local pubs and halls, and was a founding member of the Newfoundland bluegrass band, The Crooked Stovepipe. While writing his Master's thesis back in Toronto, he served as Director of Mariposa in the Schools in the pre-dawn of the Canadian children's folk music boom.

Philadelphia Sacred Harp and Ottawa Valley Trad

Pursuing a doctorate in folklore at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Shelley performed at U.S. east coast clubs and festivals. He also became involved in the burgeoning northern revival of choral singing from The Sacred Harp, an early American hymn book: he attended regional singing conventions and formed choruses in Toronto and Philadelphia. For his Ph.D. dissertation, he took up eighteen months' residence in an Ottawa Valley village where he studied Irish-Canadian singing traditions. In 1988, he turned his thesis into a book, For Singing and Dancing and All Sorts of Fun, which has been used as a textbook at Memorial University.

Ottawa Shape Notes, Synagogue Choirs, Finest Kind

Beginning in 1983, Shelley worked out of Ottawa as a professional consulting folklorist and museum guest curator. He also took on a variety of musical activities. In 1984 he formed the Ottawa Shape Note Chorus which he led for the next 15 years. (Under his direction, the chorus won Runner Up in the CBC Choral Contest in 2000.)

He also taught shape note and harmony singing at the Ottawa Folklore Centre, performed on various folk recordings, initiated the Ottawa pub carolling tradition, and directed the Congregation Beth Shalom men's choir.

In 1990, he helped form the close harmony vocal trio, Finest Kind, with Ann Downey and Ian Robb, with whom he currently records (5 CDs since 1994) and performs at clubs, festivals, and concerts in Canada, the United States, and Great Britain.

Ottawa Folklorist

At home in both academic and folksong performance worlds, Shelley wrote “The Songfinder” column for Sing Out!, the venerable American folk music quarterly and was appointed Curator of Canadian Folklife at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, a position he still holds.

Songwriting and Solo CDs

Shelley began writing songs seriously in the 1990s. He writes in a wide variety of genres and styles, reflecting his musical interests over the years. He has recorded three solo CDs of mostly his own material. You read about them, listen to clips, and order them here.

Other Singers, Shelley’s Songs

Besides being featured on his own CDs, Shelley’s songs are popping up in the repertoires of more and more performers, and on playlists of an increasing number of radio programs in the U.S., Canada, and Australia. Shelley was proud to learn that “Fa-Sol-La,” about a novice's encounter with Sacred Harp singing, informally circulated, on tape and by telephone, among singers throughout the southern United States, the home of the Sacred Harp tradition. His song about the end of the Newfoundland fishery, “No More Fish, No Fishermen” is sung in concert by such folk legends as Lou Killen and Gordon Bok and was a favourite of the late Helen Schneyer; his Cole Porter-inspired “Having a Drink with Jane” has been recorded by Eve Goldberg, Claudia Schmidt, and Jane Voss.

Songwriter for Hire

Shelley also writes songs to order. Three songs commissioned in the 1990s by superstar children’s performers Sharon, Lois, and Bram—”I’m Terrific,” “At the Five and Rhyme,” and “When I’m Dressing Up”—can be heard on their hit show, Skinnamarink TV, on the Nickelodeon network. And answering calls for material for two CDs of Canadian canoe songs, he drew on his years at summer camp and wrote “When I First Stepped in a Canoe,” a slyly humourous song about the misadventures of a newcomer to the world of paddles and portages; and “Canoeing My Troubles Away,” a slyly serious song about the pleasures someone must have paddling a canoe. His third canoeing song, “S’mores,” in praise of the gooey canoe-trip treat, is ready for Canoesongs III, should it ever come to pass, but until then can be heard and downloaded here.

Song writing Idols

If pressed to name influences on his song writing, Shelley will speak admiringly of the lyrics of William S. Gilbert, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Noel Coward, Alan J. Lerner, Tom Lehrer, Dorothy Fields, Ira Gershwin, Michael Flanders, Dolly Parton, and Dave Frishberg. He has long had a soft spot for adman Stan Freberg’s early work, and thinks a lot of what Bob Dylan has written lately.

Selected Discography

SOLO

The Old Songs’ Home (Well Done Music WDM 01) 2003

Manna (Well Done Music WDM 02) 2003

“When I First Stepped in a Canoe” on Canoesongs (Portage Productions 2004)

“The Christmas Waltz” on The Christmas Goose (Ottawa Writers’ Bloc 2004)

“Little Ice Shanty” on Life on Lake Champlain: Traditional & Contemporary Songs and Stories (Lake Champlain Museum 2006)

“Canoeing My Troubles Away” on Canoesongs Vol. II (Portage Productions 2006)

Menorah (Well Done Music WDM 03) 2007

WITH FINEST KIND

Ian Robb, From Different Angels (Fallen Angle Music FAM 01CD) 1994

Finest Kind, Feasts & Spirits (Fallen Angle Music FAM 06) 2004