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Recordings online:
    Some tracks in the discography have the word 'listen' beside the title; clicking on it makes the track play.
    And five tracks, including an unreleased live Andrew Cronshaw & Tigran Aleksanyan duet and an even newer one with Svetlana Spajic, Tigran Aleksanyan and Ian Blake, are to be found at the Andrew Cronshaw MySpace site.

LATEST CD - Ochre
Released August 23rd 2004 - for more about it click on discography and press, and for where to buy it click contact

Award nominations:
    "Ochre" was nominated as one of the short-list of four CDs for the fRoots Critics' Award in the 2005 BBC Radio 3 Awards for World Music (the other nominees were albums by Lhasa, Tinariwen and Youssou N'Dour).
    Andrew Cronshaw was nominated, along with Martin Simpson, Chris Stout and Kathryn Tickell, in the Musician of the Year category of the 2005 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards.

 

LIVE DATES...

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]

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)]

November 5th: Etnosoi festival, Helsinki, Finland
[joined by Tigran Aleksanyan]
 

2007

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)]

April 15th: Arsenaaltheater, Vlissingen, Netherlands
[solo, in a double bill with Iain Matthews]

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, Karmřy, 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: Fřrde Folk Music Festival, Fřrde, 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)]

                                    

Ian Blake & Andrew Cronshaw                                                                                           Tigran Aleksanyan
 

 In Autumn 2004 Andrew Cronshaw, Abdullah Chhadeh, Ian Blake and Bernard O'Neill performed together in the UK at:

September 23rd: St Georges, Brandon Hill, Bristol
October 2nd: Wiltshire Music Centre, Bradford on Avon
October 12th: National Centre for Early Music, York
October 15th: Union Chapel, Islington, London

Abdullah Chhadeh & Andrew Cronshaw

Abdullah Chhadeh & Andrew Cronshaw


Photos on this page by Ian Anderson (AC solo, Ian Blake & 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)

    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.

    Further performances of the Great Bear live show are planned.

Performers in the show On The Shoulders Of The Great Bear are:
Andrew Cronshaw (zither, kantele, marovantele, fujara, ba-wu, flutes etc.)
Hannu Saha (kanteles)
Ian Blake (reeds, vox)
Heikki Laitinen (vox)
Jenny Wilhelms (vox, fiddle, hardingfele)
Bernard O'Neill (double bass)
Reijo Kela (performance, dance)
Director: Vesa Tapio Valo
Lighting design: Valo Virtanen
Sound: Antti Rintamäki

Brief biographies:

Andrew Cronshaw was born in Lancashire. His first experience of living traditional music was of the singers and bagpipers of Galicia, NW Spain. While studying psychology at Edinburgh University he became involved in the strong Scottish musical scene, and found his first zither. He moved to Torridon in the West Highlands, and at that time recorded his first album. It was for a London label, and gradually he moved down south. His music became more centred on Scottish Gaelic music, with references to Galician and English traditions.

    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.

Hannu Saha is a leading player of kantele, using the various diatonic folk forms of the instrument rather than the chromatic concert-kantele, and an authority on kantele and researcher into Finnish folk musics, particularly those of the region around Kaustinen. He is director of the national Folk Music Institute, and artistic director of the national Folk Arts Centre, both in Kaustinen. He was leader of Salamakannel, and long before that a member, with Heikki Laitinen, of the band Primo. He and Andrew Cronshaw have performed together at various times in Finland and Latvia during the past twelve years. Apart from the Bear, his current performing unit is a duo with JPP/Troka double-bassist Timo Myllykangas in which he is exploring the possibilities of amplified and sound-processed kanteles. He has recently released a solo album, Mahla (Kansanmusiikki-instituutti KICD 72)

Since the 1970s Heikki Laitinen has performed folk music, and been a major figure in folk music research, including studies of kantele, runo-song and Sámi joik. He was director of the Folk Music Institute for ten years, and since 1983 has taught folk music at Finland's national music university, the Sibelius Academy, at which he now holds the first chair of Professor of Folk 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.

Reijo Kela trained as a dancer in New York with Merce Cunningham and others, but what he does is often closer to performance and construction art than to most modern dance. His chosen venues range from museums and art galleries to the rooftop of a derelict barn, the frozen sea or a performance at a Norwegian waterfall for an audience comprising the occupants of two taxis.

    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.

Jenny Wilhelms comes from Vaasa, which is the heartland of the 6% of Finns who have Swedish as their first language. Sweden lost Finland to Russia at the beginning of the 19th century, but within the Swedish-speaking community of western Finland and the Ĺland archipelago aspects of Swedish musical culture, particularly ballads, continued longer than in most parts of mainland Sweden, and today Finnish-Swedes have a traditional musical culture that has become distinct from those of both Sweden and the rest of Finland.

    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.

Dublin-born bassist Bernard O'Neill first became involved with Andrew Cronshaw's music when the latter needed someone to play cello on the June Tabor and Maddy Prior album he was producing. Since then O'Neill has been a participant in, and indeed often a motivating energy for, several Cronshaw projects and recordings. He was a member of swing band Zumzeaux, Bill Caddick's Urban Legend and other line-ups, and is now a member of Abdullah Chhadeh's Nara Ensemble, the Kimbara Brothers, Tziganarama, and is Rolf Harris's bassist and musical director as well as playing for many recording sessions, teaching bass and being a jazz examiner for the Associated Board. His solo album Echoes and Whispers (Deadly Disc 4961-2001) has just been released.

Multi-instrumentalist Ian Blake was a member of the band Pyewackett, one of whose albums Andrew Cronshaw produced. Since then he has, like O'Neill, been a core Cronshaw collaborator and ally, even though he now lives in Canberra, Australia, where he composes and records film and TV music and other projects in his own studio and plays with a number of bands. He studied music at London University. For several years he has toured the world as a member of songwriter Eric Bogle's band. His solo album is Spirits of Place (Australian Broadcasting Corporation/EMI 4891302).

Vesa Tapio Valo is a leading Finnish theatre director, now freelance but previously directing for Helsinki City Theatre and Bonn Schauspiel. He has produced all kinds of music theatre from classical opera (he wrote the libretto for Pekka Jalkanen's 1990 opera Seven Veils) to German cabaret and Finnish music drama, including the folk music drama Pohjalaisia with Heikki Laitinen in Helsinki and several productions of the moving annual community musical play in the place of his birth, Kaustinen. And of course, being from Kaustinen, he plays violin and kantele - "but only when I'm alone".

Antti Rintamäki is, like most of the best live and studio sound engineers, also a musician. As well many other recent CD releases, he recorded, mixed and mastered the CD On The Shoulders Of The Great Bear, which owes a great deal to his expertise. His sound design and control is a key aspect of the live event, as is the lighting design and engineering of
Valo Virtanen, who first worked with Cronshaw on the 1997 Kaustinen festival show A Cry In The Silence. Among other projects Valo tours worldwide as lighting designer for Kimmo Pohjonen's performances.

Information about the recording Great Bear