Celtica
~ by Paige Harden
Tammera Lane’ s lifelong passion for music began with a white piano and an old fashioned swivel stool with a red velvet cushion.
“ When I was a little girl, I was visiting my grandma, who took a pie to an elderly lady in her church. The woman had an old upright piano. Later, she told my grandma that she noticed I kept looking at the piano, and asked if I would want it,” Tammera said.“ So I got a piano— not the white one with the pretty velvet seat, but a dark brown one. None-the-less, that’ s how I got my start in music.”
She began piano lessons at age seven and later majored in piano performance at Taylor University.
After college, Tammera got a job at a Brown County folk instrument shop. As part of her job, Tammera was asked to learn how to play numerous instruments so she could demonstrate and sell
Tim Dooley, Jeff Foster, Carolyn Dutton, and Tammera Lane of Celtica. photo by Marti Garvey
them. Her new-found talent and her love of Medieval / Renaissance era music led Tammera to found her band called“ Celtica” in 1992.
“ We decided on“ Celtica” because it gave us freedom to include music from all the Celtic lands, and also clued people in as to what type of music we played,” Tammera said.“ We call it progressive Celtic to have the legitimate freedom to do what we want with the arrangements.”
Celtica performed for seven years, then took a break in 1999, and regrouped in 2009. Today, Celtica is going strong and includes the following band members: Tammera Lane( piano, hammered dulcimer, double-bowed psaltrey, hurdy gurdy, Celtic harp, and vocals); Tim Dooley( guitar, mandolin, bouzouki, Irish bodhran drum, and vocals); Carolyn Dutton( fiddle); and Jeff Foster( guitar). Clancy Clements plays bagpipes and penny whistles with Celtica, and Tom Lozano plays the hurdy gurdy and percussion.
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48 Our Brown County • March / April 2014