SPACE! I have feelings about it!

Fandom is kind of like a galaxy cluster, or maybe like a whole bunch of them. I see music as the force at the center of filkspace. Drawn together there are all the elements that make us who we are: what we love and what inspires us to create. Naturally, there’s a lot we tend to share, but everyone has their own spectral fingerprint made up of all those loves and likes. And now I’m probably taking this metaphor too far.

My fascination with the cosmos puts me in good company. My introduction to the filk community started something like:

 “Hey, you like astronomy *and* music? Neat!”

“Have I got a place for you!”

And ever since, I have been floating in a star-sea of songs. Old classics that everyone seems to know or learn quickly; new tributes to new frontiers; sad songs and silly songs and paeans to the endless, magnificent mysteries of the up-and-out. Songs by artists and astronomers, restaurant workers and rocket scientists. The enthusiasm is catching, and encouragement fuels more creation. My time so far has been both encouraging and inspiring, and my constant hope is that we can make it that way for everyone.

Last summer, a story in the news caught my eye and immediately captured my imagination: the story of Mira, the Wonderful Star.

“Mira,” or Omicron Ceti (in the constellation Cetus) is a variable star, one of the first ever recorded by astronomers. Her name comes from the Latin word for “wonderful” or “astonishing.” Mira’s apparent magnitude varies to such a degree that she seems to come and go in the night sky over time, cycling from dimmest to brightest every 332 days or so. She was approaching the peak of her brightness at the time I read the story. In a rush of inspiration–the kind for which I never feel right taking full credit, somehow–I wrote “Wonderful Star” all in a night. I was thinking of the sense of awe and wonder that must have overcome those early observers as they bore witness to something both ancient and new.

Stillness and quiet, here they surround me
Suddenly spying a faraway gleam
Lanterns of fire – how they astound me
Flickering, dancing, alive, it would seem

A few months later, in the dark of the morning following the Ohio Valley Filk Festival, I sat with my very first filk friend in a living room with a telescope in one corner and books about rockets lining every wall. Heads swimming with the memories of a weekend full of music and stardust. On the drive back from the convention, we had listened to Lauren Oxford’s new album. When we got back to Peter’s house, we listened to it again. This, too, propelled a flight of inspiration. By that time, I was dreaming big dreams about my own album. Really, it’s that I had begun to hear the dreams take shape. I was thrilled by what I heard from Lauren, by the beautiful things that she and everyone who worked on that project created together.

Eventually that morning, our listening brought us to my favorite orchestral work: Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis.” In the swirling and eddying swell of those strings, I found the kind of place I wanted Mira to live.

And here is where Sunnie Larsen comes in. Sunnie, too, has lots of feelings about space, and therefore lots of songs. Many of them can be found on her album “The Space Between Notes.” The album is a wonderful showcase of Sunnie’s talents, wide-ranging in genres and themes, and a lot of fun!

The truth is, though, that you haven’t heard Sunnie properly until you’ve seen and heard her play live. The energy she brings to her performances is always graceful, sometimes vivacious, sometimes a still and centering force at the heart of an ensemble. Some of my favorite Moments of Sunnie have happened during big jam sessions where she will move about in the circle, tuning in to one element at a time, bestowing a touch of her magic like a violin faerie on each in turn.

But now I have learned another truth: I had not, in fact, heard Sunnie properly until I heard her in the studio. It’s a great privilege for me to have so many fine musicians lending their talents so graciously to this album, but being present to work with Sunnie was something special.

I had sent her some notes beforehand about the four songs she plays on, and she arrived prepared for all of them–from the ceilidh tune to the bluegrass fiddle (Fiddle Sunnie is awesome, y’all) to my vague request that she “make it sound like she’s playing a different song from another room.” From the very first take, I could tell that she got what I meant. When I heard the finished part, I cried.

I sent her the Tallis Fantasia as a reference for “Wonderful Star.” I had an incomplete phrase in my head for one section. I hummed it to Sunnie, and she took up her bow and completed it. And that’s how it went. She set up a beautiful constellation of notes, and now Betsy Tinney has provided us with the most lushly gorgeous cello parts that feel, to me, like nebulas illumining and coloring them in.

Everything is coming together in ways I could never have predicted, not with every atlas of the heavens at my fingertips.

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Sunnie Larsen has been a shining example of a performer from the tender young age of 3, when she discovered that her charm and her ability as a musician could move audiences. Since then, she’s developed the skill to lift the hearts of her audience by adeptly weaving deep emotional notes into the fabric of her musicianship.

Today, she regularly lends her talents on the stage to bands including Vixy and Tony, the “four-person filk duo” creating original and cover filk music; Bone Poets Orchestra, a psychedelic rock band; providing violin ambiance with fingerstyle guitarist Ronnda Cadle; and she’s a member of improvisational string hat trick Ménage à Trio with Betsy Tinney and Alexander James Adams.

Sunnie’s first album, The Space Between Notes, was released in July of 2019. She can also be found as guest fiddle and vocalist on a variety of filk and non-filk albums, further proving that she finds comfort and grace on the business end of a microphone.

bio from sunnie.org