Swedish Jazz History- a series of album compilations released by Caprice Records- chronicles jazz in Sweden with representative recordings up until the 1970s. Volume 11 is a comprehensive set of four albums with a total of 62 tracks, including some unissued items. It presents a vast selection of music by artists such as Alice Babs, Monica Dominique, Nannie Porres, Monica Zetterlund, Lars Gullin, Georg Riedel, Bernt Rosengren, The Swedish Radio Jazz Group, and more. Many sources of studio and live recordings are used from different locations in Sweden. This album reflects Swedish jazz of the 1970s, characterized by internationalization and intercultural influences. Foreign Sweden-based artists like Red Mitchell, Maffy Falay and Okay Temiz worked with Swedish musicians. For instance, with its Turkish influences, the Sevda group was a forerunner in what would later develop into the World Music genre. The 1970s was a musically rich decade where older jazz coexisted with new, freely improvised forms, influenced by both American and European avant-garde artists. Different kinds of Fusion, mixing jazz with other styles and expressions, became popular, such as Jazz Rock/ Jazz Funk.
A record with Swedish folk music – played on a bagpipe from Dalecarlia! + This was unheard of when these recordings were made during 1982/83. + The bagpipe being an instrument with Swedish traditions is a rather unknown fact for most people today. + On this album Per Gudmundson plays on a type of bagpipe that could still be heard at the beginning of the last century. + The specific instrument on this album is based on two older bagpipes from the Western part of Dalecarlia and is a result of a collaboration between Per and the instrument builder Leif Eriksson. + Here we can hear the bagpipe alone, but also together with vocals (Agneta Stolpe) and other folk instruments like the violin, the lira, the zither and the harmonica. + All played by well-known Swedish folk musicians like Magnus and Ola Bäckström, Jan Winter and Erik and Ingrid Ingels. + The bagpipe is used in a more contemporary context, inspired by modern Swedish folk music. + Extra tracks are added on this release.
In the world of music, Ale Möller is a much-traveled man. + With an array of instruments he has wandered far and wide, in space and time. + In the ‘sixties and ‘seventies, guitar in hand, he sang his way through Europe, strengthening the common bonds of youth across the frontiers. + With his trumpet he explored the nightlife sounds of New Orleans, the bebop dives of downtown Manhattan. + And then with his treasured bouzouki, among the mountains of Greece, he came to the realization that he must seek his roots, his identity, in the traditions of his native land. + All these impressions, together with his own quest for a traditional folk-music sound, filled Ale’s musical crucible, to be cast in the form of this first solo record of his very special brand of folk music. + The music heard here, recorded in 1986, is oh-so Swedish yet at the same time reflective of the broad musical experience of his travels.
This rare Guthrie recording is a fluke of sorts in that it's existence is linked somewhat ironically to the fortuitous collection of folklore on what today is considered an outmoded and virtually obsolete recording technology: wire recordings. The two wire recordings on which these historic performances were found were lost for more than half a century. Discovered in a storage closet in the Florida home of Paul Bravemian, the wire recordings were donated to the Woody Guthrie Archives in 2001.
This collection old-time social and instrumental string-band music spotlights instrumental prowess. Old-time music features playing styles that pre-date bluegrass, emerging from the sgring band tradition stretching back to the early years of United State history. Artists featured: Carters, the Iron Mountain String Band, J.E. Mainer, Red Clay Ramblers and more!
Wisps in the Dell - Arrangements of Traditional Celtic Folk Songs
Olde Focus Recordings
CD
$20.99Oct 04, 2019
In the late-classical era, an Edinburgh publisher commissioned the most famous composers in continental Europe to orchestrate traditional Scottish folk songs in their original English. A lush sampling of this music is performed here by Makaris, a new early-music super-group headed by soprano Fiona Gillespie. (Olde Focus)
Amy Duncan is an Edinburgh-based singer-songwriter whose ambient, folk-inspired music is charming crowds across the country with its emotive, ethereal allure. Cycles of Life’ is a deeply personal, honest and ultimately uplifting account of the difficult life experiences Amy has faced and encapsulates the sense of moving from dark to light.
What makes a vintage year? What does the 2016 vintage of Swiss folk music taste like? 27 hours of live recordings from the Zurich Tonhalle have been put in the wine press and have here been reduced to 80 minutes of music - 20 tracks by 19 different ensembles are the result. Folk music is a cultural heritage that has grown up over thousands of years, nourished by the topography of Switzerland and by the life and love for music of our predecessors. Every generation passes on the fruits of the generations before it, and adds its own life experiences to the mix. All kinds of things are tried out and tested, and even the blues is ground up among the glaciers until it comes out singing à la Suisse. Here, then, are the main characteristics of 2016.
JUST AROUND THE BEND: SURVIVAL & REVIVAL / VARIOUS
SMITHSONIAN FOLKWAYS
CD
$36.69Sep 20, 2019
Mike Seeger, along with his wife Alexia Smith and filmmaker Yasha Aginsky, trekked through the Appalachian Mountains in 2009 to produce this extraordinary glimpse of the vigor and diversity of the region's old-time banjo artistry. When Seeger passed away later that same year, the project took on the added importance of paying tribute to this renowned musician, folklorist, and documentarian of the people. Just Around the Bend: Survival and Revival in Southern Banjo Sounds captures many banjo lineages, styles, and techniques-performed by 19 virtuosic banjo players.
The album contains compositions for female and mixed choir by a young artist, Zuzanna Koziej, fascinated by traditional culture. They are based on Kurpie, Vilnius, Lublin and other melodies present in many variants in various regions of Poland. These compositions are a response to the need to show a nostalgic, lyrical version of folk music. The works are largely improvised - the parts written down in the score are supplemented by solo vocal and instrumental improvisations. The latter is the responsibility of Tomasz Drozdek, a multi-instrumentalist who perfectly plays the cimbalom, bells, pipes, percussion instruments, pump organ, zither and lyre. In the works by Zuzanna Koziej, folk melodies take on a shape no less natural and authentic than in their original context. Their author speaks her own, honest language, in which the musical layer closely coincides with the text. The Astrolabium Choir fits perfectly into the magical sound aura of the entire album, bringing to mind the old tradition of polyphonic singing, present in the everyday life of the inhabitants of the Polish countryside.
O’er the Moor - Songs & Dances from Scotland & Ireland
Alpha
CD
$20.99Mar 29, 2024
The Kraken Consort was born in 2021 from the imagination of three musicians, friends and colleagues: theorbist Bruno Helstroffer, soprano Chantal Santon Jeffery and tenor Robert Getchell, a Celtic music enthusiast. They share a taste for traditional oral and improvised music, and were keen to team up with instrumentalists with in-depth experience of traditional music: Ronan Pellen (cistre), Brewen Favrau (piper), Sylvain Barou, David Lombardi and Laurene Durantel. For their debut album, Kraken Consort revisit the Irish and Scottish musical tradition.
Heading back on the road after the COVID-19 Pandemic, we brought (almost) an hour's worth of new material along with us: Evolve & Travel is that music. We’re releasing this album on the heels of our tenth year together as a group, and Evolve & Travel is a culmination of lessons we learned along the way. From an unlikely group of students who just happened to be in string quartet formation, to an indescribable smush of string quartet, folk band, and singer-songwriter(s), over the years we have grown into ourselves as an ensemble, as composers, and as equal partners in this wild venture that is Invoke.
Evolve & Travel showcases that journey, focusing on the strengths of Karl and Nick as songwriters/composers and letting us as a group completely abandon any semblance of formality and tradition to focus on what makes us Invoke – best friends who make the music they love to hear.
