Recent changes to MySpace have made it an un-usable mess. While this profile will stay up, so that the music tracks can be listened to here, for the main information about Andrew Cronshaw go to www.andrewcronshaw.com, www.facebook.com/andrewcronshawmusic, and www.facebook.com/pages/SANS/114822175297402
Track 1 on the player, "The Shores of Turkey", comes from "Ochre", the most recent of Cronshaw's eight albums, which is based on seven English folk song tunes.
Musicians on this track are:
Andrew Cronshaw: zither, dizi, quenacho, whistle,
ba-wu, fujara /
Abdullah Chhadeh: oud /
Ian Blake: soprano sax /
Llio Rhydderch: triple harp /
Bernard O'Neill: double bass.
More about this album at www.cloudvalley.com/discography.htm
Track 2 on the player is part of "Käärme", a live duet between Cronshaw (zither, whistle) and Armenian duduk master Tigran Aleksanyan, recorded in September 2006.
Track 3, "Ema Haual / Hällilaul - The Mother at the Grave / Lullaby", is the opening track of the 2000 album, "On The Shoulders Of The Great Bear", which was recorded in Kaustinen, Finland, in the snow of winter, and is based on 13 traditional tunes from the Finno-Ugrian lands of Finland, Ingria, Estonia and the Urals, and 3 from the Scottish Gaeltacht.
The underlying theme of this track is two Estonian runo-tunes played on the marovantele (the first recorded appearance of this instrument, which combines features from the Finnish kantele and Malagasy marovany). The bells are those of Kaustinen's wooden church.
The musicians on this track are
Andrew Cronshaw: marovantele, wind-wand, gong
Ian Blake: soprano sax, voices
Bernard O'Neill: double bass
More about this album at http://cloudvalley.com/greatbear.htm
Track 4, "Baile de Procesión", is a processional dance tune from the dulzaina and tamboril tradition of Castilla in central Spain. It comes from 1993's "The Language of Snakes", Cronshaw's 6th album, which drew on traditional material from England, Scotland, Ireland, Spain and Finland.
The musicians playing on this track are:
Andrew Cronshaw: zither
Ian Blake: bass clarinet
Chris Haigh: fiddle
BJ Cole: pedal steel
Brendan Power: harmonica.
More about this album at http://cloudvalley.com/snakescd.htm
Track 5, recorded in 2007, is an early recording by a new Cronshaw ensemble that features the great Serbian traditional singer Svetlana Spajic. In "A Solitary Song", Svetlana sings an improvisation in the Bosnian Krajina potresalica ("shaking singing") style, based on the singing of Serbs Stana and Nikola Kostic from the village of Gustovare in western Bosnia.
Cronshaw plays zither
Tigran Aleksanyan duduk
and Ian Blake bass clarinet.
Track 6 is the live BBC Radio 3 broadcast of the first part of the set by the quartet of Andrew Cronshaw, Svetlana Spajic, Tigran Aleksanyan and Ian Blake on the BBC Radio 3 stage at WOMAD UK on July 27th 2008. It was available on demand on the BBC iPlayer for a week after broadcast, but that week is passed, so it's listenable here for a limited time. This first part, which was about a quarter of the hour-long set, especially featured Svetlana, and includes an onstage interview with her by presenter Lucy Duran. There are three numbers:
Crno Goro (Andrew on Chinese flute + zither, Tigran duduk, Svetlana vocal, Ian bass clarinet),
A festive song (Svetlana solo)
and a short version of "Käärme" (Andrew zither + drone, Tigran duduk, Ian bass clarinet).
There's YouTube video of the first song at Womad, "Crno Goro" here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=US&feature=channel_page&hl=uk&v=P4yNushfr3Q (Watch it on the "higher quality" setting if you can).
The Andrew Cronshaw website - www.andrewcronshaw.com - or www.cloudvalley.com have a lot more information - bio, full discography with track details, reviews, performance dates, photos, online sales of CDs, etc. And there too - for the diligent searcher - is one more album track to listen to.
