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“Wake up darling and light the fire,
The redbird’s singing on the telephone wire,
All the family’s on the way,
It’s time to get ready for the gathering day.”
— From “The Gathering” by Laurelyn Dossett

GREENSBORO — Today opens a season of gathering.

Family and friends gather around holiday meals, against the backdrop of a descending North Carolina winter of snow-laden trees, singing cardinals, crisp nights and lowland lights.

Greensboro singer/songwriter Laurelyn Dossett draws on such scenes and the emotions they evoke in her latest musical achievement, “The Gathering: A Winter’s Tale in Six Songs.”

Dossett composed the cycle of Piedmont and Appalachian-style folk songs on a commission from the North Carolina Symphony.

On Friday and Saturday, “The Gathering” will make its world premiere at the symphony’s “A Carolina Christmas” holiday Pops concert in Raleigh.

Through 24 minutes of music and lyrics ranging from lullaby to lively, listeners travel with a prodigal daughter as she makes a journey home.

“Everyone has felt in one way or another like the prodigal son or daughter in a family,” Dossett says. “Holidays can be a joyous time of reunion but also difficult.”

“There are a lot of images and themes of the connectedness within a family, and how individuals and families come together and separate.”

Dossett has gathered other stellar musicians to join her symphony performances: Greensboro native Rhiannon Giddens Laffan, a fiddle player and opera-trained singer of the Grammy Award-winning Carolina Chocolate Drops; bluegrass mandolin player Mike Compton, who has played with John Hartford and with the Nashville Bluegrass Band, and on the Grammy Award-winning “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” recordings; and award-winning banjo player Joe Newberry of Big Medicine.

Seattle composer Aaron Grad arranged the score for string band and orchestra.

“I love the lyrics,” Grad says of Dossett’s work. “And the arc of the story that she created has a very intimate and personal feel.

“But there’s also something very universal about it, the idea of a traveler and coming home to family.”

Local fans don’t have to travel to Raleigh to hear “The Gathering.” The four-member string band, plus bassist Jason Sypher, will perform those and other holiday songs in a Dec. 6 concert at Triad Stage. They also have recorded them on CD.

“We really liked playing together, and wanted to give the songs a chance to be heard by people not going to the symphony,” Dossett says.

Triad Stage audiences know Dossett’s lyrical voice and guitar well.

She and theater artistic director Preston Lane have created four plays that meld stories and music rooted in the region: “Brother Wolf,” “Beautiful Star: An Appalachian Nativity,” “Bloody Blackbeard” and “Providence Gap.”

One of Dossett’s “Brother Wolf” ballads attracted the ear of Levon Helm. He picked up “Anna Lee” for his Grammy Award-winning album “Dirt Farmer.”

Her song, “Remember My Name,” from “Bloody Blackbeard” caught the North Carolina Symphony’s attention. She performed it on a 2009 tour with the orchestra.

Symphony Music Director Grant Llewellyn and General Manager Scott Freck asked her to compose music for a holiday concert. Dossett wanted to write about family gatherings, against a backdrop of a winter night.

“The winter night sky is so clear, so much crisper and darker than the summer night sky,” Dossett says. “The moonlight and starlight are so bright, in contrast.”

Those images came to her in February 2010, in a Fancy Gap, Va., cabin. The married mother of three had holed up alone with her 1929 Gibson L-O guitar to write music for “Providence Gap.”

When she looked down into the Appalachian valley during the day, she saw nothing but snow-covered trees. As night fell, the lowland lights appeared.

She saved that memory for the song, “Lights in the Lowlands,” about the prodigal daughter who wonders whether to go home.

“There are lights in the lowlands tonight,

They’re a promise that I’m not alone

Will my father still know me, my mother still remember me

Should I follow the lowland light home?”

The daughter returns home in the spirited “Redbird,” which paints a lively musical picture of a family gathering. Dossett also works other friends and family — including daughters Emilia, Rosalie and Sophie — into the lyrics.

“Rosie is making cornbread, Sophie is making pie ... Emilia lays the table lace...”

She drew inspiration for “Diamonds in the Pines” from snowy trees she encountered while passing through Southern Pines.

Moon and pearl imagery in “String of Pearls” was inspired by her sister-in-law’s gift of pearl necklaces to her daughters and nieces.

“It gave me the metaphor that I needed, the string of pearls and the way we are connected across generations and within a generation,” Dossett says.

Grad found her songs to be “elegant and spacious,” allowing room for him to create an orchestral arrangement that gives the music a continuous flow.

He describes the result as “a really exciting musical statement, unlike anything I have heard before. It’s very American, very natural, yet there is something sophisticated and nuanced about it.”

In August, Dossett gathered in a Whitsett cabin with Laffan, Compton, Newberry and Sypher to record “The Gathering” and other traditional holiday songs.

Atlanta Metromix praised the CD as a “welcome departure from the usual acoustic holiday fare.”

To Laffan, “It’s a beautiful record, and one that will hopefully be a part of many people’s Christmas times for years to come.”

Contact Dawn DeCwikiel-Kane at 373-5204 or dawn.kane@news-record.com