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Northern sound includes polkas

Sound of the North is a local band including Don Redden, left, Beth Bressette-Bowman, Heidi Burtenshaw, and Jim Dow, who will be releasing their new CD A Taste of Europe Saturday at ArtSpace, above Books & Co., 1685 Third Avenue.
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Sound of the North is a local band including Don Redden, left, Beth Bressette-Bowman, Heidi Burtenshaw, and Jim Dow, who will be releasing their new CD A Taste of Europe Saturday at ArtSpace, above Books & Co., 1685 Third Avenue.

Citizen photo by David Mah

It's guaranteed there will be a spirited accordion player at the launch of a local band's new CD called A Taste of Europe 7:30 Saturday night at ArtSpace.

Sound of the North band member Beth Bressette-Bowman said she's been playing the accordion for more than half a century.

"There will be quite a variety of different sounds heard at the concert Saturday," said Bressette-Bowman. "Each one of us brings a different background. We have traditional, old-time music, we have European songs and tunes, some guitar flat picking and lots of harmony singing."

The band will play polkas, folk ballads and songs from all over Europe. The CD is A Taste of Europe because they've had so many requests to put their European music together, she added. The CD took two years to make at Bullet Recording Studio in Vanderhoof.

"One of our members, Heidi Burtenshaw, is from Germany and three others are of Scottish decent, with a bit of Irish mixed in and we all just love European music," Bressette-Bowman said.

The four-piece band has been together for eight years.

Don Redden and Bressette-Bowman played old-time music together and then met the other members of the band by chance. A 20-minute rehearsal led to on-stage chemistry and they decided to play together on a permanent basis. Jim Dow came later when a former band member moved on.

Sound of the North does a lot of volunteer entertaining in the community, including visiting seniors homes, hospitals, and they have organized and performed in fundraisers like the Tsunami Relief concert in 2005 and the Haiti benefit concert held earlier this year.

"I've been here all my life and some of the other members of the band have been here for many years and we just have great community spirit," said Bressette-Bowman. "We think music brings a lot of healing and the gift of the music is what we want to get out there. That's more important to us than getting rich and famous. It's important to share the music for the good of others."

After the interview Bressette-Bowman said she was going to go to the hospital to play violin for some of the patients because she believes it helps people to get better.

"People who come to the concert can expect the music to be easy on the ears," she added. "It's not going to pound their ears off if they're not used to this kind of music. It's acoustic, a little bit softer and we like to make sure the words are heard because we write songs and we want to get the message of our ballads across."

Burtenshaw and Redden write a lot about the wilderness of the north country and Bressette-Bowman is a social worker so she writes more about social issues, she said.

Tickets to the show are $10, children under 12 are free. Tickets are available at Books & Co., 1685 Third Avenue, or at the door.

For more information about the band visit www.soundofthenorth.com.