Andrew Cronshaw with Tigran Aleksanyan
London, England, United Kingdom | INDIE
Music
Press
Ochre: review extracts
"Beautiful, evocative music... an album that will surely be welcomed with open arms throughout the world!"
- Charlie Gillett, BBC London & BBC World Service
"Fabulously restrained and crystalline-cool... splendidly unclassifiable"
- Peter Culshaw, The Observer
"The musicians feel their way into the material with supreme delicacy... But it's the sense of rootedness in a gritty marginal England that allows this music its brush with profundity"
- Mark Hudson, The Daily Telegraph
"One of the finest albums of the year"
- Fiona Talkington, BBC Radio 3 Late Junction
"Don't worry about categorising this album as folk, classical, world or any other kind of music - just file under Essential"
- Mel McLellan, BBCi
"It's exotic and mysterious, and it comes as a shock to realise that the music being played is actually English"
- Colin Irwin, fRoots
“The influences that Cronshaw brings to bear on the seven traditional tunes transform the familiar into the exotic, and remind us that England is experiencing a new historical age. Each track floats by like England's Dreaming.”
- Lee Blackstone, Rootsworld (USA)
“Consummate musicianship it may have, but it is the ideas that seethe and shoal in this music that really excite.”
- Ken Hunt, Record Collector
“We are compelled to explore the universality, the wider outlook and potential of a tradition…the essence of each song is taken on a journey like never before.”
- Jennifer Byrne, Sing Out! (USA)
“Once in a while I come across a completely unexpected type of music that is so incredibly beautiful that I stop all I'm doing and at the end of the record can only do one thing: hit the repeat button. This happened to me a few weeks ago when I heard the new CD of old English folk songs by Andrew Cronshaw, an obstinate figure in the world of British folk music. I was blown away.”
- Ton Maas, Ode (USA & Netherlands)
“This man is an English original. He paints unusual sound pictures with the melodies we love and brings out totally unexpected aspects of them.”
- Vic Smith, The Folk Diary
“Brilliantly adventurous… an all time classic.” - Keith Hudson, Taplas
- Various
Discography
ANDREW CRONSHAW discography (8 solo albums):
1974 "A Is For Andrew Z Is For Zither"
(Transatlantic Xtra)
1977 "Earthed In Cloud Valley"
(Trailer)
1978 "Wade In The Flood"
(Transatlantic Leader Tradition)
1982 "The Great Dark Water"
(Waterfront)
1988 "Till The Beasts Returning"
(Topic)
1989 "The Andrew Cronshaw CD"
(Topic)(combining "The Great Dark Water" + most of "Till the Beasts' Returning")
1993 "The Language Of Snakes"
(Topic Special Delivery)
2000 "On The Shoulders Of The Great Bear"
(Cloud Valley)
2004 "Ochre"
(Cloud Valley)
See www.andrewcronshaw.com for details of all these, and www.myspace.com/andrewcronshaw for some tracks.
Photos
Bio
Andrew Cronshaw is a British multi-instrumental explorer, producer and world music journalist. His dramatic, spacious music combines perspectives from English, Scottish Gaelic, Finno-Ugrian, Iberian, Middle Eastern, Polish, Serbian, Armenian and other traditions. He lives in the UK, but over the past twenty years he has been particularly connected with Finnish traditional music and its musicians.
His eighth and most recent CD, "Ochre" - viewing English folk song melodies through the traditions of Arabic, Welsh and Greek musicians is one of only two albums ever nominated for both BBC Radio 3 Awards for World Music and BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. His previous album, "On the Shoulders of the Great Bear", was based on music from Finnish tradition but viewed from an outsiders perspective, involved a number of leading Finnish roots musicians and was recorded in Finland.
His musical career revolves around a 74-stringed chord zither, an instrument of which hes almost certainly the worlds sole professional player. He took it up and electrified it for the first time 40 years ago, and has since made continuous developments to its sound and technique. To this he adds other instruments far from the mainstream including marovantele (a unique Finnish kantele/Madagascan marovany hybrid of his own invention), huge Slovak flute fujara and metal-reeded Chinese ba-wu.
As a journalist he has for many years been the main writer of reviews and features on Nordic, Baltic, Iberian and other mostly European musics for the world and roots music monthly magazine fRoots, as well as for other international publications including the chapters on Finland, Sweden, Norway and the other Nordic and Baltic countries for The Rough Guide to World Music.
Over the past three years Cronshaw has been joined in a mesmerising duo by Tigran Aleksanyan, Armenian master of his countrys exquisitely soft-toned reed instrument, the duduk, one of the worlds most appealing-sounding wind instruments.
Born in the Ararat Mountains in Armenia, when he was seventeen Tigran joined the Armenian State Dance Ensemble and toured worldwide with them. Having played a number of concerts with the Ensemble in London, he moved to Britain in 2001. The move has opened up a new world for him and his music, playing among others with Cronshaw, singer Yasmin Levy, percussionist Mustafa Shams, the 35-piece La Banda Europa, and in studio and film sessions.
For much more information, see
www.andrewcronshaw.com
www.myspace.com/andrewcronshaw
www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUbeGZWPxKk
Band Members
Links
