A Time to Keep and other songs
Piano / voices / fiddle / guitars / accordion / banjo / mandolin / toy piano / glockenspiel / harmonium / sansula
LISE SINCLAIR / INGE THOMSON / BRIAN CROMARTY
ÁSTVALDUR TRAUSTASSON / EWEN THOMSON
Icelandic translations by A∂ALSTEIN ASBERG SIGUR∂SSON
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| Live on the Fair Isle Stage! |
PERFORMANCE DATES:
MARCH 2012
SUN 11 - Town Hall, Lerwick
THURS 15 - Scottish Storytelling Centre, Edinburgh
SAT 17 - Reykjavík, Iceland
ALBUMS ON SALE AT ALL PERFORMANCES
The stories in George Mackay Brown’s ‘A TIME TO KEEP’ are tales of life in all its small detail, set in the harsh and beautiful landscape of the Northern Isles. They are lit with the author’s precise, poetic touch and the characteristically understated Northern voice. The characters inhabit an unwritten history between the sagas and the 20th century as if carefully gathered from time itself.
Lise Sinclair is a singer, songwriter and poet of that same landscape and its music and literary traditions — a native of Fair Isle, Britain’s most remote inhabited island, half way between Orkney and Shetland.
Lise has written a series of new songs that will bring the stories out of the book and connect the past with the present and the Northern Isles with Iceland, where George MacKay Brown drew reference and linked the Scottish and Nordic cultures as they are still lived in these Isles. Lise says that it wasn’t so much an idea that presented itself, as she “began to hear these songs on first reading the book, as if they were already there, singing out of George’s clear, lyrical prose.”
The music has been written in collaboration with Icelandic musician and composer, Ástvaldur Traustasson and recorded by a band of musicians from across the North Isles and Iceland, including Lise, Ástvaldur, Inge Thomson, Brian Cromarty, Ewen Thomson and poet and Icelandic translator A∂alstein Asberg Sigur∂sson. The band gathered from the North, in Edinburgh in January to rehearse and record the songs and will be releasing the album and performing the songs at a special series of concerts set to take place in the Isles, Edinburgh and Reyjavík in March 2012, at the end of the Year of Scottish Islands Culture.
The music is a rich tapestry of sound: voices, piano, fiddle, guitars, accordion, mandolin, banjo and harmonium, blending a wealth of tradition with what’s new in Scottish music and Icelandic jazz into songs which are a journey from beginning to end, through time, under wide island skies.
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| Would you like to buy a CD? it's double disk set in one regular, one with Icelandic. You can contact Lise Sinclair at: lisesinclair@btinternet.com or wait as they should be available on line soon. |
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| 2 CD Set - you'll love it!
A Time to Keep has 14 songs, here is the title track, a story of a fisherman-crofter in the elemental story of the islands, featuring the Fair Isle Chapel bell... and The Five of Spades, a tale of an Orkneyman and a gambler who sailed for Nova Scotia, it includes Brian Cromarty singing The Ballad of Check Harra...
http://soundcloud.com/lise-sinclair/the-five-of-spades
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| Stand up and take a bow! A time to remember as it was a great evening with so many talented people.
Supported by Shetland Arts
The Scottish Poetry Library - The Scottish Storytelling Centre.
& the estate of George Mackay Brown.
Thank you to Loganair for getting us from one island to another to sing. |
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