Music a palliative for city engineer

Karin Hilding knows firsthand how divisive politics can be.

In her job as engineer with the city of Whitefish, Hilding often sees a variety of projects, opinions and agendas. Harmony isn’t always possible — which makes Hilding appreciate her life outside her day job even more.

For more than a decade, she has performed with local Irish group Tra le Gael. As a musician, Hilding has an opportunity go beyond the issues that occupy many people’s time and energy.

“It transcends politics,” she said of music. “Politics tends to divide people. Music and art tend to bring people together.”

HILDING SPENT a good portion of her life moving west. She was born in Sweden, but her family took a boat to the United States when she was 6 months old. They lived in Connecticut, then moved to New Jersey, then to Illinois and finally to Utah, where Hilding spent most of her growing-up years.

Music always was an important part of Hilding’s life. When she was 4, she asked to take piano lessons. When she was 10, she began playing the flute. Along the way, she also picked up the penny whistle and recorder.

Playing music was an important outlet for Hilding while she studied engineering at Utah State. Playing with a folk music group gave her a much-needed way to express her artistic side.

“When you study engineering, the classes are really dry and boring,” she said. “I needed a creative outlet to balance the more mundane” classes.

After graduating from Utah State, Hilding earned a graduate degree in engineering in Seattle. She then spent eight years as an engineer around Seattle, primarily working on stormwater projects for small cities in the Puget Sound area.

Hilding also spent a few years in the 1980s building solar homes in Colorado and New Mexico; sustainable energy and building is one of her passions.

She and her husband, Rob Gordon, moved to Whitefish in the late 1990s. Until he moved to Seattle for college, Gordon had always lived in small towns, and he wasn’t a fan of city life, Hilding said.

Family friends from the Flathead Valley found Gordon, a social worker, a job at the Dialysis Clinic Inc. in Kalispell, and he, Hilding and their 6-month-old daughter Maya moved to the valley. Their daughter Annika was born about a year and a half later.

Hilding found work, too, as an engineer with the city. She has been in that position for 15 years, during which time she has worked on everything from developing safer routes for kids to get to school to bike paths to cleaning up the Whitefish River.

IT WASN'T LONG after her family moved to the Flathead that Hilding met the musicians who would become her bandmates. She was laid up with a torn Achilles tendon and had some free time on her hands.

Gary Morris, a teacher at North Valley Music School, was offering a Celtic music class. Hilding joined, and there she met harpist Katy Meyers.

“The band formed out of that class,” Hilding said.

Barbara Calm, who plays the hammered dulcimer, bass recorder and guitar, joined the group a few years later. Tra le Gael has been together for about 13 years.

The name was born more out of necessity than careful planning, Hilding said. The group was scheduled to perform and suddenly found themselves in need of a name.

“‘Tra le Gael’ was the name of a Celtic tune we played,” Hilding said. “It just kind of stuck.”

THE GROUP has performed throughout the Flathead Valley as well as at the Montana Irish Festival in Butte and at Northwest Folklife, a folk music festival in Seattle.

Their performance at last summer’s festival in Butte led to Tra le Gael’s upcoming appearance on Montana PBS. The band will be the guest artist March 22 on “11th and Grant with Eric Funk,” a series that features performances by and interviews with Montana musicians hosted by Funk, a composer, musician and faculty member at Montana State University. The show starts at 7 p.m.

“The ‘11th and Grant’ sound guy was the sound guy at Butte,” Hilding explained. “He liked us and suggested us to ... Eric Funk.”

While Hilding has seen herself on public access television in her capacity as engineer, this will be the first time she has seen herself on TV as a musician. Recording the episode was “not relaxing,” she said.

“It was a neat experience, but I don’t know what I’m going to think when I see myself on TV,” she said.

APPEARING ON the show led to Tra le Gael’s latest CD, “Sailing Home to Glacier.” It had been quite a while since the band’s last recording, and the people with “11th and Funk” encouraged Tra le Gael to release a new album.

They recorded it last fall at David Griffith’s Snoring Hound Studio in Somers. Many songs on the album are traditional Irish tunes, but Morris wrote two of them.

“New 1” is so-called because Morris couldn’t think of a name, Hilding explained with a laugh. “Barbara’s Waltz” was written for Calm, Morris’ girlfriend.

While the CD was finished before Tra le Gael played at First Night Flathead on New Year’s Eve, its official release concert is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. March 24. The show takes place at Christ Church Episcopal, 215 Third Ave. E. in Kalispell.

Tickets will be sold at the door for $8 for adults, $5 for children and $20 for families. All proceeds will go to the church’s Red Door Pantry, a food pantry it operates in partnership with Laser School and Bridge Academy, and The Nurturing Center.

Naturally, Tra le Gael also has performances lined up on St. Patrick’s Day weekend.

The band plays from 6:30 to 9 p.m. Friday at Rising Sun Bistro, 25 Second Ave. W. in Kalispell. Tra le Gael has two performances scheduled Saturday, St. Patrick’s Day: They play from 6 to 8:30 p.m. at the Great Northern Bar in Whitefish, and will move across the street to perform at Crush Wine Bar from 9:30 to 11:30 p.m.

For more information about Tra le Gael, visit www.facebook.com/tralegael.