Musicians: Andrew Cronshaw, Tigran
Aleksanyan, Ian Blake, Sanna Kurki-Suonio.
Tracks:
1. Käärme
2. Fujaruk
3. The Unbroken Surface of Snow
4. Mhàiri Mhìn Mheall-Shùileach (Gentle Dark-Eyed Mary)
5. Im Hogutz
Available now direct from Cloud Valley (click one of the rather garish 'buy' buttons below)
and from the usual shops and online sellers
In the seven years since Andrew
Cronshaw's previous album, Ochre, most of his performances have featured
a musician who until now hadn't appeared with him on CD - Armenian duduk master
Tigran Aleksanyan.
Now with The Unbroken Surface of Snow they record together, joined by
long-time Cronshaw collaborator
Ian Blake on bass clarinet and soprano sax, and
the great Finnish singer
Sanna Kurki-Suonio, probably best known outside
Finland for her membership of Swedish/Finnish band Hedningarna. She sang on
Cronshaw's sixth album The Language of Snakes back in 1993, and this time
contributes a Finnish epic runo-song to the spacious, minimalist unfolding
conversation of the new album's 34-minute title track.
Since its release in October 2011
the album has spent three months in the top 10 of the
World Music Chart Europe.
"The music is sparse, glacial and utterly beautiful, with
a wide, panoramic sense of infinite space;
you will happily lose yourself again and again in the title track,
a far northern wilderness transformed into sound"
- Tim Cumming,
Songlines
"Ochre was already a masterpiece,
but The Unbroken Surface of Snow is a
musical paradise on earth" - Marius Roeting,
New Folk Sounds, Netherlands
"Deep, unfolding music... and like
snow itself, it falls silently and accumulates
additional weight and resonance with repeated listening" - Lee Blackstone,
Rootsworld, USA
"If the BBC ever make a sequel to
Frozen Planet, here surely is its emotive soundtrack"
- David Quantick,
Uncut
This remarkable, quiet, haunting piece of folk art... The 34-minute title track
is a Finnish creation myth set to
a musical landscape that is as close to silence as a heavy snowfall, and more
beautiful" - Tim Cumming, The
Independent
Since the recording of the album, and powerful live shows together in Finland in
the summer of 2011,
the four have united as the band
SANS, in
which Sanna's and Ian's roles are much increased.
SANS made its first appearance
outside Finland at a special London showcase on October 23rd (see below for
video from that),
and will be
touring worldwide in 2012 and beyond. Look further down this page for dates. (Agent
www.sasamusic.com)
Andrew Cronshaw
- electric zither, fujara, marovantele, kantele, ba-wu etc.
Sanna Kurki-Suonio - voice
Tigran Aleksanyan
- Armenian duduk Ian Blake -
bass clarinet, soprano sax etc.
All four of the musicians who played on
The Unbroken Surface of Snow came together in summer 2011 for live shows at
Finland's Kaustinen Festival, and it became clear that they're a band. It's
called SANS. The debut show outside Finland was in London on October 23rd, and
more shows are planned during 2012 and onward. Agent:
SASA Music
The Great Dark Water
re-released on CD The Great Dark Water,
first released as a vinyl LP on Waterfront in 1982, then incorporated into The
Andrew Cronshaw CD, has been re-released on CD, with all its original artwork, by
Acrobat Music Ltd as Trapeze TRACD6052. It's available from Cloud Valley Music -
click here - as well
as from other suppliers. Reviews of the re-release are on the
Press page.
Reviews online
Reviews written by Andrew Cronshaw for
fRoots magazine of about 1600 albums, mainly
from the Nordic and Baltic countries, east and central Europe and Iberia, are
now online (except those published in the last three months, and not features -
buy the mag in its print or online version for those!). Find them
here or via the
'Journalism' page of this website.
Recordings online:
Some tracks in the
discography
on this website have the word 'listen' beside the
title; clicking on it makes the track play.
And there are some streaming tracks to be found at the
Andrew
Cronshaw MySpace site
LIVE DATES...
2012
June 23rd:
Home Festival, Dartington Hall,
nr. Totnes, Devon, UK SANS (Ian Blake, Sanna Kurki-Suonio, Andrew
Cronshaw, Tigran Aleksanyan)
July 11-15th:
Kaustinen Festival,
Kaustinen, Finland
[joined by Tigran Aleksanyan, Ian Blake
& Sanna Kurki-Suonio]
October 23rd:
St. Ethelburga's,
London, UK
A special showcase, the first performance outside Finland by the new band:
SANS:
Andrew Cronshaw,
Tigran Aleksanyan,
Ian Blake
& Sanna Kurki-Suonio
2010
February 5th:
St Ethelburga's,
Bishopsgate, London, UK
[joined by
Tigran Aleksanyan]
March 31st:
National Library of Australia,
Canberra, Australia
[Solo illustrated lecture]
April 9th-11th:
Fairbridge
Festival, nr. Perth, Australia
[joined by
Ian Blake]
April 30th:
St Ethelburga's,
Bishopsgate, London, UK
[with
Tigran Aleksanyan] The Voice of Duduk,
organised by
MusicofArmenia.com (rescheduled from
April 16th)
February 26th:
New Greenham Arts,
Berkshire, UK
[joined by Tigran Aleksanyan]
November 8th:
The Green Note,
London, UK
[joined by Tigran Aleksanyan]
2008
January 31st:
Union Chapel, London,
UK
[solo]
April 11th:
Polskie Radio Festival Nowa
Tradycja, Warsaw,
Poland
[joined by
Svetlana Spajic
(vox) and Tigran Aleksanyan
(Armenian duduk etc),
and including a collaboration with
Wladislaw and Krzysztof Trebunia–Tutka]
[Highlights broadcast on Polskie Radio immediately following the show]
May 6th:
Brighton Festival
(Pavilion Theatre),
Brighton, UK
[joined by
Tigran Aleksanyan
(Armenian duduk etc)]
July 18th:
Kaustinen Festival,
Kaustinen, Finland
[joined by Ian Blake
(reeds etc)]
July 26th & 27th:
WOMAD festival,
nr. Malmesbury, Wiltshire, UK
[joined by Svetlana Spajic
(vox), Tigran Aleksanyan
(duduk),
Ian Blake (reeds etc)]
[The first 20 minutes of the show on the 27th was broadcast live on BBC Radio 3, it can be heard on
www.myspace.com/andrewcronshaw. There's also a link
there to a YouTube video of part of the same show]
November 5th:
Etnosoi festival,
Helsinki, Finland
[joined by Tigran Aleksanyan
(duduk)]
January 21st:
Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry,
UK
[joined by
Tigran Aleksanyan
(Armenian duduk etc)]
February 10th:
Half the World
season at the
Pizza on the Park, Knightsbridge, London,
UK
[joined by
Tigran Aleksanyan (Armenian duduk etc.),
Attab Haddad (Iraqi oud),
Louai
Alhenawi (Syrian ney),
Jenny Adejayan
(cello),
Zuzana Novak
(mbira, vox)][The group also featured guest vocalist
Natacha Atlas]
March 2nd:
Maa ja Ilm Festival, Tartu,
Estonia
[joined by Tigran Aleksanyan
(Armenian duduk)]
June 23rd and 26th:
Pécs Festival,
Pécs, Hungary
[solo]
2006
April 9th:
Holywell Music Room,
at
Oxford Folk Festival,
Oxford, UK
[solo, in double bill with Icelandic rímur
singer Steindór
Andersen & Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson]
June 9th:
Viking festival, Karmøy,
Norway
[solo; flame-lit show in reconstructed
Viking longhouse]
June 11th:
Orre Gamle Kirke
(Orre old church), Klepp,
nr.Stavanger, Norway
[solo]
June 22nd:
Norwich Arts Centre,
Norwich, UK
[joined by Tigran Aleksanyan
(Armenian duduk etc.)]
June 30th & July 1st:
Suoni dell'Altro Mondo festival: Incontri 2006
at Villa Penicina,
Romagnese, nr.Genoa, Italy
[2
concerts resulting from week of collaboration on north Italian
music
with Nikola Parov, Guo Yue, Stefano Valla,
Beppe Gambetta, Ben Mandelson et al.]
July 6,7,8th:
Førde Folk Music Festival,
Førde, Norway
[joined by Tigran Aleksanyan]
August 5th:
(12 midday)
The Big Chill festival,
Eastnor Castle deer park, nr. Ledbury, Herefordshire,
UK
[solo]
August 17th:
Half the World
season at Live on the Park (The Pizza on the Park), Knightsbridge, London, UK
[joined by
Tigran Aleksanyan]
August 19th:
Chateau d'Abbadie, Hendaye
at Bidasoa Folk Festival,
Euskadi, Spain/France
[solo]
2005
performances included:
June 19th:
Celebrating Sanctuary Festival,
London, UK
June 25th:
St Clement's Church at
Leigh Folk Festival, Essex, UK
[At both of these joined by
Tigran Aleksanyan (Armenian duduk)]
August 13th:
Festival Ethnoambient
Salona,
Solin, Croatia
August 21st: Alten Kirche at
Krefelder Folklorefest, Krefeld, Germany
[At both of these joined by
Ian Blake]
September 28th:
Concert in
Montreal, Canada
October 1st:
Concert for CBC Radio,
Montreal, Canada
October 2nd:
Concert in
Montreal, Canada
[All three Canadian shows as trio with
Liu Fang
(pipa, guzheng)
and
Pham Duc Thanh
(dan bau)]
In Autumn 2004
Andrew Cronshaw, Abdullah Chhadeh,
Ian Blake
and
Bernard O'Neill performed together in the
UK at:
Photos on this page by Ian Anderson (AC
solo, Ian Blake & AC), Karolina Jankowska (Svetlana Spajic & AC), Jamie Orchard-Lisle (Abdullah Chhadeh & AC), AC (Tigran
Aleksanyan), Valo Virtanen (Great Bear)
OTHER PERFORMANCES
ON THE SHOULDERS OF THE GREAT BEAR - THE LIVE SHOW
In 2002 a live touring show based on On The Shoulders Of The Great Bear was created at the request of CMN Tours, featuring Andrew Cronshaw, Heikki Laitinen, Ian Blake, Jenny Wilhelms, Bernard O'Neill, Hannu Saha and performance artist/dancer Reijo Kela, and directed by Vesa Tapio Valo with lighting design by Valo Virtanen and sound by Antti Rintamäki.
(See below for brief biographies, written at the time of the tour)
Supported, co-ordinated and publicised by the CMN (the Contemporary Music Network - the touring wing of the Arts Council of England), with additional support from Suomen Kulttuurirahasto, and produced by Ros Rigby for Folkworks, it rehearsed in the snows of Kaustinen in February 2002, debuted there in the national Folk Arts Centre on March 1st and then moved to Britain for a series of six performances at Newcastle Playhouse (Newcastle-upon-Tyne), Thoresby Riding Stables (Nottinghamshire), South Hill Park Arts Centre (Bracknell), Warwick Arts Centre (Coventry), Queen Elizabeth Hall (London), Brewery Arts Centre (Kendal).
In July 2002 tour, the show returned to the place of its birth, the Folk Arts Centre in Kaustinen, for a performance during Kaustinen International Folk Music Festival 2002. For that show, Jenny Wilhelms was unavailable (performing in France with her band Gjallarhorn), so Natacha Atlas took her place.
In 1989 one of the records sent to him as a writer for
fRoots magazine was by the band Salamakannel, led by Hannu Saha. Contact ensued, and Cronshaw became drawn to Finland and Finnish music, subsequently producing Salamakannel and Nikolai Blad and being involved in and initiating other projects. He had no intention of performing Finnish music himself, but a good way of finding out about it was to play through and explore the nature of the tunes he found in collections, and inevitably they began to creep into his repertoire. His sixth album,
The Language of Snakes, includes some Finnish material and several Finnish musicians.
The plan in going to Kaustinen to make album seven was to use both Scottish Gaelic and Finno-Ugrian material to make new music imbued with the old ways of European music, which in both traditions are relatively near to the present-day surface. In the event, so strong was the influence of the country of recording that the album comprises almost entirely Finno-Ugrian material, but because of the musicians and approaches involved it's expressed in ways somewhat different from the prevailing styles of current Finnish tradition-derived music.
While folk music might be seen as a process of copying from earlier generations, Laitinen emphasises the role of improvisation in both his teaching and his own performing, which in its wide range including theatre, performances with Reijo Kela, choral directing, and vocal performance-art cheerfully crosses the lines of musical categories, breaking down the perception of folk music as the popular music of a past era by uniting it with the popular music of today, and shows the avant-garde to be at one with the extremely ancient.
In many of his pieces the audience follows the dancer from place to place, but for his 1990
Cityman he lived for a week in a transparent glass apartment, visited each day by a dinner and dance guest. His construction
The Silent People comprises about a thousand peat-headed beings that one day appeared in front of Helsinki's cathedral, moved to Ämmänsaari island for
The Bold And Beautiful Wretches Of The Shore and in their present location suddenly emerge before the passing motorist on highway 5 north of Suomussalmi like some great stroke of magic.
The themes of Kela's work deal with Finnish identity, its cultural myths and images, and the individual as part of changing society. He frequently performs alone, but also works with musicians, particularly with Heikki Laitinen and Kimmo Pohjonen.
The powerful Finlands-Svensk band Gjallarhorn, in which Jenny sings and plays fiddle, is one of Finland's best known roots bands. Performing Swedish-language, Finnish-language and occasionally Icelandic material, as well as creating its own. Since its debut album
Ranarop (Finlandia 0630-19627-2) and the recent Sjofn (Gjallarhorn RANARCD-1), with a new album due for release in late 2002, the band has been touring ever more widely and to great acclaim in Europe, America and Australia. Concurrent with her Gjallarhorn work, after a period at the Keski-Pohjanmaa Conservatory Jenny now studies at Sibelius Academy's Folk Music Department and recently also at the Ole Bull Academy in Voss, Norway.
