"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 here . (The track will continue to play while you read).
The second track above, recorded in September 2006, is part of "Käärme", a live duet between Cronshaw (zither, whistle) and Armenian duduk master Tigran Aleksanyan; the two of them are currently performing some shows together.
The third track, "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 here . (The track will continue to play while you read).
The fourth track, "Baile de Procesión", comes from 1993's "The Language of Snakes", Cronshaw's 6th album, which drew on traditional material from England, Scotland, Ireland, Spain and Finland. "Baile de Procesión" is a processional dance tune from the dulzaina and tamboril tradition of Castilla in central Spain.
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 here . (The track will continue to play while you read).
The fifth track, 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.
The Andrew Cronshaw website or Cloud Valley's has a lot more information - bio, full discography with track details, reviews, performance dates, photos, credit card sales and other sources of the CDs etc. And there too - for the diligent searcher - are some more things to listen to...
There's also half an hour of the February 2007 Andrew Cronshaw And... show at Half the World in London on the April 2007 edition of fRoots radio, streaming on demand here
Main photo of AC by Alexander Brattell, www.brattell.com. Album cover photos and other track pics are by AC, Jamie Orchard-Lisle and Antti Rintamäki
