Keeping Music In The Family

It begins with one cello, two fiddles and three smiling brunettes. But it doesn’t stay that way for long. A folk concert with The Gawler Sisters—Molly, Edith and Elsie, eldest to youngest—might as well be a family reunion because, by the end, their ensemble routinely doubles in size.

Not to be left out are their parents—banjo-, guitar- and harmonica-wielding John and his wife, fiddle- and violin-playing Ellen—plus Edith’s spouse, rhythm guitarist and work song aficionado Bennett Konesni of Shelter Island. The entire clan will take the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center stage on Saturday, April 20, as a benefit for WPPB 88.3 FM.

And at least one local music lover can’t wait to see them play.

“I’m enraptured by their sound and spirit. It’s a youthful talent and energy combined with the old school sounds of roots and folk music,” WPPB radio personality Bonnie Grice said last week during an interview. “Their three-part harmonies are like heaven. Angelic. Can’t wait for folks to experience them live. They’ll want to pack up and run away with them. And just make music around the world!”

Clare Bisceglia, executive director of the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center is a recent convert to the music, she said.

“I wasn’t familiar with The Gawler Sisters until Bonnie gave me their CD,” she wrote in an email interview last week. “I thought, how terrific to celebrate a talent with local roots while supporting our local NPR station.”

The dream of making and sharing their music around the world is one the Gawler family, who are from Maine, has turned into reality. All their lives, they have traversed the globe playing songs, meeting strangers and collecting the best of what traditional music has to offer, much of which has traveled through the folk process itself and lost its origins, Edith Gawler explained last week during a telephone interview.

“We get music from all sorts of places, not just New England. We love Scandinavian music, especially Swedish fiddle tunes,” she said. “We play southern, old-time tunes, some songs Bennett has written. But a lot of them, we have no idea where they came from. And nobody really knows.”

The family prefers it that way, Ms. Gawler said. With it comes a sense of freedom that allows them to push the boundaries of traditional music and make the songs their own, a craft each of the sisters has been honing since the age of 3, which was when the girls could each hold a fiddle without dropping it.

“Mom started teaching us,” Ms. Gawler said. “We grew up in Maine going to contra dances and playing music with the neighbors and our friends, and it’s such an incredible musical community. And we were completely immersed in it. It’s just in us, completely.”

Three years apart from one another in age, friendships naturally formed between the sisters, though their personalities developed independently. Molly and Elsie were the ballerinas, said Ms. Gawler, who added that she was slightly more rebellious and picked up soccer as her extracurricular activity, when she wasn’t making music with her family.

“Molly is the sweetest woman you’ll ever meet, and same with Elsie, oh my gosh,” Ms. Gawler said. “Dad is the kind of guy who can speak to anybody, just anybody and instantly go deep and ask the right questions and really connect with you almost instantly. Anybody. Doesn’t matter if they’re running for president or 2 years old. And Mom is a peach.”

When Mr. Konesni, heir to Sylvester Manor on Shelter Island, officially joined the family in July 2011 after marrying Edith, he fit in immediately, she said, “like a glove.” After all, they met through the music scene, as did John and Ellen Gawler.

“We were just kind of friends and then it blossomed into something more through making music and spending more time together,” Mr. Konesni said last week during a telephone interview. “Oh yeah, great move. Best decision of my life.”

From the outside looking in, Mr. Konesni said he sees the group as a slice of home. They mix the spirit of Maine with the North Woods, the farms and the fields and connect them with like-minded music and traditions from all over the world—West Africa, Europe, Sweden, East Asia, he said, and the list continues.

“The core of our repertoire, the heart and soul of our repertoire, is really these songs that most people have never heard before in a tradition that is really powerful but isn’t really recognized in modern music,” he said. “People end up going away with tears in their eyes. That’s a normal thing.”

He laughed, and continued, “It’s amazing to be a part of that. Most musicians forge an emotional connection with their audiences, but I haven’t seen it to the depth of that. This family, they will do it. I don’t know what it is exactly, other than a real honesty in what they believe in. And honesty is not all serious. A big part is just having fun with each other and figuring out what it means to be a family.”

The Gawler Sisters & Family will play the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center on Saturday, April 20, at 8 p.m. as a benefit for WPPB 88.3 FM. Tickets are $35. VIP seating and after-show champagne reception tickets are $150 and limited to 48 guests, who will mingle with The Gawler Sisters, Bonnie Grice, Brian Cosgrove, Ed German and the on-air team at WPPB. For more information, call 288-1500 or visit whbpac.org.