Dominig Bouchaud and Yann Honoré have been a duo for some years now. Their music is rooted in Breton and Celtic traditional styles, and they particularly explore this repertoire's minimalist dimensions. Now, they have a new CD out: L'arbre noir for lever harp and fretless bass!
They'll launch the CD on December 13th in Quimper (see invitation below), and you can buy it as from now from Keltia Musique.
Ailie Robertson has been nominated for Composer of the Year at the Traditional Scottish Music Awards, and Corrina Hewat's band 'The Unusual Suspects' is also in the running, for Live Act of the Year!
The deadline for voting is this Friday, that's TOMORROW, and you can vote here. As Corrina says - I am sure you have already voted, but has your pal next door?
Congratulations to Ailie Robertson, who is one of four finalists in the running for 'Composer of the Year' at the Scottish Trad Music Awards.
It may be cold and wintery here in Europe, but the musicians of November's Camac Voice must be feeling warmer, as they're in the middle of summer in Australia! The clip you can now hear on www.camac-harps.com is from 'An Andro' on Christine Morphet and Pete Franche's debut CD, Telenn Tri. Bringing the wheel full circle back to where, as it happens, Camac Harps are based, An Andro is inspired by the andro dance from Breton folk music.
Pete: "We first met when Christine brought her harp to an Irish pub session that I help to run. I play the piano accordion as well as guitar and bouzouki, so I suppose we were an unlikely combination. The harp is not a common instrument in Australia, so to many people the perception of a harp is that of a pretty, rather inoffensive instrument you see occasionally hear playing glissandos in orchestral pieces! So it was a pleasant surprise to hear the harp being used as a lead melody instrument in the Celtic tradition."
Christine: "I learnt the harp as a teenager when I changed piano teachers, and my new teacher had a pedal harp in her teaching room! I then persuaded my parents to purchase my first lever harp and continued with both piano and harp lessons. Unfortunately after five years of learning classical harp, I gave up music and focused on work.
Twenty years later, I rediscovered my love of the harp, and also discovered Celtic music for the first time. I went to an Irish pub session with my harp as I'd learnt a few Celtic tunes and wanted somewhere to play them. I found the session very welcoming, especially as no-one there had seen a 'real live harp' before.
As Telenn Tri, we first performed together at a Medieval fair in South Australia. From that initial performance we have been asked to play at various costumed events, including a wedding in the caves at Naracoorte. Over the last four years we have performed at many Australian festivals including the National Celtic Festival, Pt Fairy Festival, and we are looking forward to playing at the Australian Celtic Festival in New South Wales next year. Over time we have developed a varied repertoire of traditional and contemporary music, and we are always looking for something new to play.
I attended the Dinan harp festival this year in workshops with Myrdhin and Dominig Bouchaud which I found very inspirational! This has given us more ideas and material to add to our concerts and forthcoming CDs.
On our current CD, which we released earlier this year, An Andro (a Breton dance) doesn't appear to have any other name. I picked up the tune from the inaugural New Zealand Harp Festival in Wellington, and it became a requested tune at the sessions. Over time this tune has grown into its current form, which is much faster and more driving than how a traditional Andro would be played.
For a long time people have asked us for recordings of our music, and eventually this year we managed it. All the instruments are played by us, with my niece designing the artwork, and all recording and sound engineering was completed by Pete."
Camac Harps have their factory and head offices in Brittany. Brittany, along with Scotland, Ireland, Wales and Cornwall, is a Celtic land, and where there were once Celts you usually find a thriving lever harp scene today.
Grégory Cappoen is a lever harpist and teacher in Brittany's administrative capital of Rennes. He has developed a particularly genial teaching concept: Telenn Armor. Telenn Armor is a mobile teaching studio, offering lessons at venues in the North, South and centre of Rennes. It also offers different types of lessons - with or without solfège, individual and group - and a creative and practical series of additional courses. Grégory has been kind enough to tell Harpblog about it!
Grégory Cappoen
"When I was seven, I joined Brittany's first lever harp class, founded by Mariannig Larc'hantec in Lorient. If you want to become a lever harpist, obviously it is great to find yourself in a class dedicated to that instrument. There is nothing wrong with being a concert harpist who teaches lever harp on the side, but you'll not be so involved in the specific techniques and repertoire that belong entirely to the lever harp. This is one fact that has inspired me offer a lever harp school of my own.
The celebrated neo-Breton bard Myrdhin has a new CD out as from today. Moving Sands is inspired by the intriguing fact that sand can make a sound. Scientists believe that this sound, which hums somewhere near a frequency of 430 Hz, is caused by a combination of factors when the grains of sand have a diameter between 0.1 and 0.5 mm, when they contain silica, and when they have the right ratio with a top layer of dry sand above them. The sand's song is produced by the friction between the grains, or the compression of the air between them. To date, this phenomenon has been scientifically ascertained at no less than thirty-three beaches on the Atlantic coast.
The CD is a reflection on what a pleasure it is to walk on sand - supple as it is, moulding itself to our feet, allowing us to sink into it, and to hear its quiet singing.
Born in Upper Brittany into a Cornish family, Myrdhin is one of the pioneers of the Celtic harp renaissance. He has been travelling the length and breadth of the world since the 1970s, sharing the mysteries of Celtic music, and drawing heavily on the roots it has in Brittany. Founder of the group Au Delen Dir with Jean-Pol Huellou on flute (you can hear them on the album "Harp and Bamboo", available here), Myrdhin also performs in the duo Ars Celtica with his partner Zil. Other collaborations include Magic Chaudron with Zil and the electroshaman Pascal Lamour, with the Sengalese griot Baaba Maal, and with "uku, cuts and beeps" artist Lëam. Nothing if not a voyager, Myrdhin's last album - "D'île en île" together with Lëam - is a harp journey that begins on the islands of Brittany and ends in Japan, via the Hebrides, Ireland, the Magdalen Islands, the West Indies, Réunion and Java.
Myrdhin has also composed numerous film scores, as well as being a writer, poet, lecturer, journalist and photographer. For the last eighteen years, he has been director of the famous Rencontres Internationales de Harpe Celtique in Dinan: the biggest harp meeting in Brittany, including three competitions (for composition, performance and improvisation), and a major platform for all the most important Celtic artists in the world. It is also an important centre for luthiers and ethno-musicologists.
Myrdhin has released twenty-eight albums, and collaborated on many more. His recording AfroCelts Sound System, together with Davy Spillane, James MacNelly, Iarla O’Liornaid, Kauwding Cissokho, Ayub Ogada, and Martin Russell, went gold twice in Ireland and was nominated for a Grammy Award in the "world music" category in the year 2000. Myrdhin's last disc sold over five hundred thousand copies.
Here is the programme for the next - the twenty-eighth! - in the series of famous international lever harp meetings held annually in Dinan, Brittany. This year's meeting will take place between July 6th and 10th (with a Camac exhibition on-site between the 8th and 10th), with a typically star-studded line-up from the length and breadth of the Celtic harp world - Myrdhin, Dominig Bouchaud with Yann Honoré, Mariannig Larc’hantec, Cristine Mérienne, Mandragore, Jakez François International Lever Harp Competition prizewinners Ameylia Saad Wu and François Pernel, the Celtic flute and harp Criddh-Heart Duo, Bonnie Shaljean, Vincenzo Zitello, Paraguyan harpist Gerardo Zarate, and more...
You can download the full programme (together with location and ticket details) here:
This morning, good news from two fantastic harpist-composers.
Firstly, Ailie Robertson's new album Traditional Spirits (a terrific concept about music and whisky) is now available from Ailie's website, and on iTunes. The album has been reviewed in the Scotland on Sunday newspaper:
"Young Scottish maestro Ailie Robertson has fine taste - in 11 tracks with titles like Boiling Point, The Cooperage, The Angel's Share and Amber Gold, she devotes her latest album to whisky.
Cast around the old Gaelic air Ho Ro Mo Bhobag an Dram (The Favourite Dram), she has composed and arranged everything else in the suite for her harp, plus classy fiddles, guitar, sax, whistles and piano, bass and percussion, all performed with modern, imaginative and fluidly adventurous creativity."
If you're in Scotland on Saturday June 4th, there is also another chance to hear the Traditional Spirits programme performed, at the Glenkinchie Distillery in East Lothian. The evening will begin with a tour of the distillery, followed by whisky tasting, and then the concert. All proceeds from the event will go towards supporting 'Love Oliver', a charity that helps fund research into childhood cancers. It also aims to provide practical help to families on Ward 2 at Edinburgh's Royal Hospital for Sick Children.
Tickets are available by emailing ailie.robertson@gmail.com.
Secondly, Eleanor Turner has uploaded two of her compositions to YouTube, including a work I've always loved and whenever I've had the chance, I've gone on to anyone who'll listen about how more people should play it. I REALLY LOVE THIS PIECE...MORE PEOPLE SHOULD PLAY IT...etc.
You can also buy a CD of Eleanor's own excellent recording of the work with Keziah Thomas, here.
Here's another great example of a harpist pursuing a really original musical path. Lena Woods is both a harpist (a student of Myriam Serfass) and a rock singer. As well as her own songwriting, Lena also does covers of e.g. The Cure, Alter Bridge, Janis Joplin, Metallica, Pearl Jam, NIN.
Mia Theodoratus has brought out a new record: harp arrangements of the surf classics Apache and Misirlou on vinyl (details here). Read more about Mia's diverse and original projects on her website news page!
