Some folk songs survive because their melodies are unforgettable. Others endure because their stories still make sense centuries later. The most fortunate have both.
Two new choral works from Casey Wood, My Love and I and Star of the County Down, begin with melodies that have already traveled through generations of singers. But Wood does not treat either song as a museum piece. In both arrangements, the folk material becomes a starting point for music designed for choirs singing today.
Published by Gentry Publications and represented in the Brandon A. Boyd Choral Series, the two works approach that idea from very different directions. My Love and I reimagines The Water Is Wide for SATB choir with a contemporary pop, jazz, and R&B vocabulary, while Star of the County Down brings the energy and storytelling of the well-known Irish ballad to TB voices.
Together, they offer an interesting example of what can happen when traditional music is not simply reproduced, but reconsidered for a new generation of singers.
My Love and I: A Familiar Melody in a New Musical Setting
The foundation of My Love and I is The Water Is Wide, one of the best-known melodies associated with the British folk-song tradition. The Water Is Wide belongs to a broader family of traditional songs associated with Waly Waly. The Vaughan Williams Memorial Library catalogs versions under this shared tradition, including an entry explicitly titled Waly Waly (The Water Is Wide), and versions of the material are held in the library’s collections. Like many genuine folk songs, it does not come to us as a single fixed composition by a single author. Its text and melody have existed in related forms, changing as they were collected, sung, and passed from one community to another.
That history makes the song particularly well suited to reinterpretation. There has never been only one way to sing The Water Is Wide.
In My Love and I, Casey Wood builds on that tradition while giving the piece a clearly contemporary identity. The arrangement is written for SATB choir, with lyrics by Casey Wood and his brother Kory Wood. Piano, electric bass, and drums create a pop/R&B foundation, while the harmonic language incorporates pop and jazz influences. Gentry classifies the piece as an accessible, easy-level concert work.
The familiar melody gives singers something recognizable to hold onto, but the musical surroundings change the way we hear it. Rather than trying to imitate an older folk performance style, the arrangement allows the tune to exist comfortably beside musical sounds contemporary singers already know.
That can be especially valuable in a choral program.
Choirs do not have to choose between traditional repertoire and contemporary musical language. My Love and I demonstrates that the two can occupy the same space.
Accessible SATB Writing Without Sacrificing Musical Interest
There is also a practical advantage to the SATB voicing.
Four-part soprano, alto, tenor, and bass writing makes the piece available to a broad range of mixed ensembles, including high school concert choirs, collegiate groups, community choruses, and adult ensembles. Its accessibility allows directors to spend less rehearsal time simply getting through the notes and more time working on the musical details that make the arrangement effective.
Singers can focus on phrasing, ensemble balance, rhythmic precision, stylistic awareness, and the relationship between the voices and rhythm section.
For developing choirs, that makes My Love and I a useful introduction to contemporary choral style. For more advanced ensembles, the apparent simplicity of the material provides room to work at a higher level of nuance.
That versatility has already been demonstrated in an honor-choir setting. My Love and I was performed by the 2025 All-Virginia SATB Chorus, where it appeared as part of the ensemble’s recorded program.
Its selection for an All-Virginia ensemble makes an important point: accessible choral music and serious choral music do not have to be opposing categories.
Sometimes accessibility simply gives musicians more room to make music.
Star of the County Down: Storytelling for TB Voices
If My Love and I approaches folk music through a contemporary harmonic and rhythmic lens, Star of the County Down draws its energy from one of the great storytelling songs of the Irish tradition.
The ballad is set near Banbridge in County Down, Northern Ireland, and tells of a young man who encounters a young woman—often identified as Rosie McCann—and becomes captivated by her. The words are attributed to Cathal MacGarvey, while the familiar melody belongs to a much older traditional tune family also associated with Dives and Lazarus and the hymn tune Kingsfold.
It is the kind of folk song that almost asks to be performed rather than merely sung.
There is movement in the text, personality in the story, and an infectious momentum in the melody. Casey Wood’s arrangement recognizes those qualities and places them at the center of the choral experience.
Written for TB voices, the Gentry edition uses two-part writing and rhythmic drive to make the arrangement approachable for developing ensembles while retaining the character of the original ballad. Gentry lists the work as an easy-level concert selection with piano accompaniment and optional instrumental materials. It is also part of the Brandon A. Boyd Choral Series.
Why Good TB Repertoire Matters
The TB voicing is not a minor detail.
Finding repertoire for tenor and bass singers that is musically satisfying, age-appropriate, and genuinely enjoyable to perform can be one of the more persistent programming challenges for choir directors.
Too often, developing tenor-bass ensembles are given music that feels like a simplified substitute for SATB repertoire. The notes may technically fit the voices, but the music does not always give the ensemble a strong identity of its own.
A successful TB arrangement needs to do more than reduce the number of parts.
It needs to take advantage of what those voices can do.
Star of the County Down is particularly well suited to that purpose because the folk song itself carries such a strong sense of character. The singers are not simply producing two-part harmony; they are telling a story. Its rhythmic energy encourages confident singing, while the accessible voicing can help a developing ensemble establish independence, blend, diction, and a unified sound.
That makes the piece useful for middle school and high school tenor-bass choirs, changing-voice ensembles, festival groups, honor choirs, and collegiate tenor-bass ensembles looking for a lighter concert selection that still offers genuine musical substance.
It can also provide an effective contrast on a program dominated by slower or more formal repertoire.
Two Folk Songs, Two Different Choral Experiences
Placed side by side, My Love and I and Star of the County Down show two very different ways of working with traditional music.
My Love and I takes a reflective folk melody and surrounds it with a contemporary musical language. Its SATB writing, rhythm section, and pop, jazz, and R&B influences create a bridge between folk tradition and sounds that feel current.
Star of the County Down leans into the narrative and rhythmic personality of its source. Its TB voicing puts the storytelling directly into the hands of tenor and bass singers and gives those ensembles repertoire with energy, humor, and character.
What connects the two is not that Casey Wood treats folk songs in a particular formula.
It is almost the opposite.
Each arrangement seems to ask what already makes the original song work—and then builds outward from there.
That is an important distinction. Folk music has survived precisely because musicians have continued to make it their own. These melodies have crossed borders, changed texts, found new accompaniments, entered hymnals, concert halls, recordings, classrooms, and countless informal performances.
A contemporary choral arrangement becomes another part of that history.
Programming My Love and I and Star of the County Down
Both pieces also give conductors considerable flexibility in concert planning.
My Love and I could work particularly well in:
- high school or collegiate mixed-choir concerts;
- honor choir and festival programs;
- programs exploring love, relationships, distance, or human connection;
- folk-song themed concerts;
- concerts combining traditional choral repertoire with contemporary musical styles;
- spring or end-of-year programs;
- community choir concerts; and
- programs exploring how old melodies are transformed by new generations of musicians.
Star of the County Down offers equally useful possibilities for:
- tenor-bass choir concerts;
- middle school and high school TB ensembles;
- changing-voice choirs;
- honor and festival choirs;
- Irish or Celtic-themed programs;
- folk-song concerts;
- multicultural or world-music programs;
- lighter moments within a formal concert; and
- programs centered on storytelling, courtship, community, or place.
A director could even program the two works together.
Doing so would create a small study in contrast: two traditional songs associated with the British Isles, two contemporary choral interpretations, two different ensemble configurations, and two very different emotional worlds.
One is reflective and contemporary.
The other is animated and narrative.
Both demonstrate that folk repertoire can speak to singers without requiring the music to sound as though it belongs exclusively to the past.
Continuing the Folk Tradition
One reason folk songs remain so useful in choral music is that they arrive with history—but not with a requirement that every generation perform them in exactly the same way.
That leaves room for arrangers.
It also leaves room for choirs.
With My Love and I, Casey Wood takes the familiar musical world of The Water Is Wide and gives SATB singers a contemporary way into it. With Star of the County Down, he gives TB voices the chance to inhabit one of Ireland’s enduring musical stories with rhythmic energy and personality.
Both works are published by Gentry Publications, and both reflect the kind of repertoire represented in the Brandon A. Boyd Choral Series: music that is practical enough to be useful to conductors while still giving singers something distinctive to say.
For choir directors looking for accessible contemporary SATB music, quality TB choral repertoire, folk-song arrangements for school choirs, Irish choral music, or fresh approaches to traditional melodies, these two Casey Wood arrangements are worth exploring.
The songs may have begun long before any of us were singing them.
What matters is that they are still giving choirs something new to sing today.