Known for their distinctive, refined and instantly recognizable sound, vocalist Rose Vaughan and multi-instrumentalist Cathy Porter, the songwriting team for East Coast Canada’s Rose Vaughan Trio since 1989, continue to unite their remarkable talent and integrity, offering wisdom and urbanity in a warm, unaffected style.

Graceful melodies, evocative lyrics and sensitive arrangements draw on elements of contemporary folk, jazz and pop, yet remain truly unique.

Rose and Cathy performed together across Canada throughout the 1992 under the name of Rose Vaughan Trio (with several different 3rd members) and have recorded three full-length studio albums (Sweet Taragon, Fire in the Sow and Winter Rose) and EP (A winter’s Tide) and several single (including an audience favourite, Red River Blues) plus their latest release, double-album Gardner of the Moon (2016).

Their recordings have been played on national and regional Canadian radio and television plus campus radio stations throughout Canada and the USA.

Canadian television appearances by the Trio were broadcast overseas to Canadian troops in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Croatia, Golan Heights, Rwanda an Haiti, as well as to NATO bases in Belgium and the Netherlands. Their music continues to be featured on various YouTube channels around the world.

Their music has endured for decades and fans have reported using their music for special occasions including birthing, weddings, memorials and celebrations of life. Their most popular song, ‘Stone and Sand’ (Fire in the Snow, 1993), originally nominated for Best Song at Canada’s East Coast Music Awrdds (1994), was also voted all-time favourite song a full three years later by listeners to Roots and Wings, a national CBC Radio program (1986).

Rose and Cathy re-recorded the updated version of the song for Gardener of the Mon (2016) with guest vocalist Rose Cousins, Mary Jane Lamond, Dave Gunning and Bill & Joel Plaskett. It continues to be honoured to this day, having inspired Cape Breton’s international Stone & Sand & Sea & Sky Coastal Arts Festival, with Rose and Cathy’s work at the heart of its mandate.

In 2023 Cathy was awarded a Nova Scotia Arts Council Creations Grant to write and arrange new music for Rose’s melodies and lyric to create a brand-new collection of songs, entitled ‘Songbook’, as yet unrecorded

Quotes

“Your song, Stone and Sand, expressed a feeling that I could not articulate. Its haunting melody has become part of my life — wonderful for breaking down writer’s block!” — Madeline Ferguson Allen, author. Song lyrics quoted in Wake of the Invercauld, Exile Publishing, NS ((2021)

“Music as spare as it is beautiful, with intimate vocals from the soul of a poet” — CBC Radio Producer, NS

“Elemental, powerful and spacious as the Maritime landscape.” — Kingston Whig Standard, ON

“The music is delicate and leaves much space for the notes to glisten.” — Halifax Herald, NS

“Rose Vaughan practically burst on the scene as a full-blown talent. One is immediately struck by how much the timbre of her voice and the moods she creats sound like Joni Mitchell on her early albums. Vaughan is a polished songwriter but her musical style is not derivative of Mitchell’s. Rahter than follow a guitar-based folk style thee Trio’s tyle owes as much to jazz and pop.” — Dirty Linen Magazine, Baltimore, USA

“Porter provides that welcome

Extra Quotes:

“Theses sophisticated musicians offer meticulously nuanced arrangement and harmonies, which are virtually perfect in their fineness and innovativeness.” — Dirty Linen Music Magazine, Baltimore, MD

“The sensitivity of the music carries through to performance. Porter’s piano and keyboards have a directness and immediacy ranging in mood from thunder to dance. Her inventive and lively arrangements give the songs a rich sense of harmonic direction. Even more remarkable than the integrity and the sureness of the writing is the delightfully open and inviting quality [of] the music that draws you in by its honest vitality.” — Wormwoods Cinema Guide, NS

Awards/Nominations
Stone and Sand (Fire in the Snow), nominated, East Coast Music Association, Song of the Year 1994
Rose Vaughan, Nominated Best Female Vocalist, East Coast Music Association, 1994
Rose Vaughan, Nominated Best Female Vocalist, East Coast Music Association, 1993
Man Maid Moon (Sweet Tarragon), Winner, CBC Radio Atlantic Canadian Song Contest, 1991