Ochre

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 22:38:41 -0500

It’s relatively common to hear British musicians investigating foreign traditions; indeed Andrew Cronshaw himself explored Finnish music with his last album, On The Shoulders Of The Great Bear, made in Finland’s traditional music heartland. But for his new one, Ochre, it’s back to Britain, and the view is reversed - musicians from the traditions of the Middle East, Greece and Wales react to and build on music exotic to them – that of England.

The result, with each of the seven tracks using as its starting point a song melody from English tradition, is inventive, image-rich and voluptuous. The team that gathered at Dreamworld studio, in the green rolling countryside near the south-west tip of Wales, comprises Syrian qanun and oud virtuoso Abdullah Chhadeh, the great Welsh triple-harpist Llio Rhydderch, Arabic vocal diva Natacha Atlas, Pontic lyra virtuoso Matthaios Tsahourides from northern Greece, multi-talented Australia-resident Brit Ian Blake on bass clarinet, clarinet, soprano sax and prepared piano, Irish double bassist Bernard O’Neill, and Cronshaw himself on electric zither, the 6 foot long Slovakian flute fujara, Chinese brass-reeded ba-wu and other irregular instruments from the shelf marked “what’s that?”

On The Shoulders Of The Great Bear

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 22:38:41 -0500

On The Shoulders Of The Great Bear is built on sixteen traditional tunes. Twelve are from three territories with Finno-Ugrian languages - Finland, Ingria and Estonia - one is from the Siberian Ob-Ugrian Vogul/Mansi people of the north-east Urals, and three are from the Scottish Gaelic-speaking tradition. In all these traditions are to be found aspects of a musical world much older than, and very different from, the rhyming song forms, couple-dance musics and western classical harmony which spread across most of Europe in the last two or three centuries.

New Music From Andrew Cronshaw on Calabash Music

Ochre

On The Shoulders Of The Great Bear