Trefor Goronwy

Trefor Goronwy joined This Heat in 1982 to replace Gareth Williams as bassist/vocalist after the latter had quit the band, and played on their last European tour. After a brief hiatus, he and Stephen Rickard joined Charles Hayward in the studio to work on what was originally to be a Hayward solo project. As things progressed the venture took on more and more of a collaborative nature, and the recordings were ultimately released as Meridian by Camberwell Now . Several years and several recordings later, when the band finally split up, Trefor withdrew into himself somewhat, recording and making increasingly infrequent live performances under a variety of names, often producing an entirely new set of work which would only ever be performed on one occasion. Soon he began to work as a sound technician, which would lead on to involvements with artists such as Pere Ubu, Momus, The Band of Holy Joy, David Thomas and the Two Pale Boys, Spearmint (in an earlier incarnation), and Towering Inferno, among others. Early on in this period Trefor went on several tours of the former Soviet Union, and it was during one of these tours that he realised that he was more interested in the language, culture and history of the countries themselves than in what he was supposed to be doing, so he decided to enrol on a degree course in Russian Studies in London. Another consequence of his travels was his subsequent involvement with the Tuvan musicians, Huun-Huur-Tu after meeting Albert Kuvezin (now of Yat-Kha) in a bar in Novosibirsk, Siberia, during a music festival. They exchanged telephone numbers and agreed to meet up should either end up in the other’s neck of the woods (which seemed like a remote possibility at the time). Soon, however Huun-Huur-Tu found themselves in Wales, having represented Tuva at the International Eisteddfod in Llangollen, and a call was made. They had time to kill and nowhere to go and Trefor had a spare room in London. He also had access to a 24-track studio which was unbooked for a weekend. The recordings they made were touted around, and were ultimately released as Huun-Huur-Tu’s first album, Sixty Horses in My Herd. On their departure, the Tuvans left behind a somewhat battered igil, which Trefor eventually restored and began to play. This led to an interest in the possibilities of Asian spike-fiddles in general (to which category both the igil and the erhu (which he had already been playing in Camberwell Now)) belong. After three years spent living in Moscow, Trefor returned to London, and, having married a citizen of Kazakhstan, it was only a matter of time before he added a kobyz (a relative of the Tuvan igil) to his collection. Trefor has been making recordings prominently featuring these instruments for some time, and the first results of these endeavours are at last appearing here.