ANDREW CRONSHAW – ARTIST PROFILE
May 2nd, 2006 by rui
For the past decade or so zither-player and multi-instrumentalist Andrew Cronshaw has been particularly connected with the traditional music of Finland and other Finno-Ugrian countries, but before that, and continuing influences, are the musics of the Scottish highlands, where he lived for some years, and of northern Spain, with which he has been familiar since childhood.
But he returns to English music, albeit viewed from an unusual angle, for his most recent album Ochre, which was nominated for “Album of the Year” in the 2005 BBC Radio 3 Awards for World Music. Cronshaw was nominated for “Musician of the Year” in the 2005 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards.
The group of musicians he assembled to make it – Syrian qanun virtuoso Abdullah Chhadeh, Greek Pontic lyra master Matthaios Tsahourides, Welsh triple harp legend Llio Rhydderch, Arabic diva Natacha Atlas, plus frequent Cronshaw collaborators Ian Blake and Bernard O’Neill, bring their own traditions to bear in a shared exploration of the exoticism of shapely English song tunes.
At the heart of Cronshaw’s instrumentation is a 74-string electrified European chord zither, to which he adds a range of other stringed and wind instruments including fujara (a 180cm long ornately carved Slovakian shepherd’s three-hole flute generating shivering breathy harmonics) and ba-wu (a seductive-toned brass-reeded instrument from China’s Yunan province).
When playing live he has often been a solo performer, and during the early 1990s in The Splendid Venues Tour he created his own unusual performing circuit, presenting in the course of a couple of years over a hundred atmospheric solo shows largely in ancient English village churches. However on his eight albums he has been joined by a long list of other musicians, with most of whom he has at various times appeared live.
Since 1991 Cronshaw has become involved in the emergence of new Finnish music strongly rooted in its folk traditions. He has produced albums by the band Salamakannel and the remarkable songwriter Nikolai Blad, and developed new live ensemble projects. His sixth album, The Language of Snakes, featured Finnish singer Sanna Kurki-Suonio, fiddler Arto Järvelä and kantele player Minna Raskinen. In 1997 he produced and played in a large Finnish project of runo-songs and kanteles, Huuto Hiljaisuudessa – A Cry in the Silence, for Kaustinen International Folk Music Festival. In 2000 Kaustinen Festival presented a large performance project initiated by Cronshaw, Hauenleuka, which involved the floating of a giant 7-metre five-string kantele down the river Perho accompanied by four hundred local musicians and dancers.
His seventh album, On The Shoulders Of The Great Bear, is based almost entirely on Finno-Ugrian music. It was recorded at the studio of the national Folk Arts Centre in Kaustinen, and features Heikki Laitinen, Hannu Saha, Jenny Wilhelms, Minna Raskinen, Kimmo Sarja, Ian Blake and Bernard O’Neill.
In March 2002 a major touring show based on the Great Bear album was staged by the Arts Council of England’s Contemporary Music Network, produced by Folkworks. Directed by leading Finnish theatre director Vesa Tapio Valo, it involved most of the musicians on the album – Cronshaw (zither, marovantele, ba-wu, various flutes, concertina, jew’s harp, shawm, fujara etc.), Ian Blake (bass clarinet, soprano sax, vox etc.), Bernard O’Neill (double bass etc.), Heikki Laitinen (vox), Hannu Saha (kanteles etc.), Jenny Wilhelms (vox, fiddle, hardingfele etc.) – plus extraordinary physical performance artist/dancer Reijo Kela. It’s no straight rendition of the music on the album but an immersion of the audience in the atmosphere of the old, pre-classical, pre-chordal layer of European music that is close to the surface in the traditions of Finland and of the other north European regions of taiga and tundra, using aspects of performance art and intensified by dramatic use of sound and light. After rehearsal and debut in Kaustinen it went to England for the six performances of the CMN tour before returning to Finland for a show at Kaustinen Festival.
One of the instruments Cronshaw plays on the album and in the show is the marovantele, a double-faced kantele with a set of strings on each face, which he designed in conjunction with kantele maker Kimmo Sarja. It came about as a result of Cronshaw’s contact with Madagascan stringed instruments such as the valiha, jejy, kabosy and marovany in the course of eight years touring worldwide as live sound engineer and tour manager for the Madagascan band Tarika.
Having interpreted Finno-Ugrian music from viewpoint of a foreigner, it seemed time to look back at the folk music of his native England, but taking the more distanced perspective made possible by his work with other traditions. Meeting Egyptian/Belgian/British singer Natacha Atlas and with Syrian qanun virtuoso Abdullah Chhadeh, both, like Cronshaw, British-resident, opened up some interesting possibilities in that direction. The result is his eighth album, Ochre, which involves Chhadeh, Atlas, Greek Pontic lyra player Matthaios Tsahourides, Welsh triple-harpist Llio Rhydderch, Australia-resident British reeds-player and multi-instrumentalist Ian Blake, and Irish double-bassist Bernard O’Neill.
Ochre went on to win nominations as Album of the Year in the 2005 BBC Radio 3 Awards for World Music, and in the same year Cronshaw was nominated for Musician of the Year in the BBC Radio 2 Folk Music Awards.
He has several productive and successful live-performing alliances, all ongoing, including with long-time collaborator Ian Blake, with Armenian duduk player Tigran Aleksanyan, and with Canada-based Chinese pipa and gu-cheng virtuoso Liu Fang and Vietnamese dan bau master Pham Duc Thanh.
As a world music journalist Andrew Cronshaw writes features and reviews for magazines, particularly for fRoots but also including The Strad, Unknown Public, Sing Out (USA), and others. He wrote the chapters on Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the Faroes, Iceland, Sámiland, the Baltic States and Portugal for the second edition and imminent third edition of The Rough Guide To World Music, the sections on music for the latest editions of The Rough Guide to Portugal and The Rough Guide to the Baltic States, the chapter on Galician and Asturian musics for Celtic Music (published by Backbeat UK/USA), and the European section of the UK roots music directory Direct Roots and Direct Roots 2.
On The Shoulders Of The Great Bear (Cloud Valley CV2007) was released in January 2000. Ochre (Cloud Valley 2008) in August 2004.
Apart from his own albums, he has produced, and in most cases engineered, albums by June Tabor, Silly Sisters, Bill Caddick, Zumzeaux, Brendan Power, Salamakannel, Nikolai Blad and others, and produced the mixes of Flook’s Flatfish and of Hannu Saha’s Mahla.
Recent session work includes playing on albums by Scott Walker, Suede, Natacha Atlas, Pascal Gaigne, B.J.Cole and Ute Lemper, on film soundtracks including Trevor Jones’ for GI Jane, and others with Magnus Fiennes. The song Zitherbell, which he co-wrote and performs with Natacha Atlas on her album Foretold in the Language of Dreams (Mantra MNTCD 1029), appears in Jonathan Demme’s film The Truth About Charlie.
Press Quotes
“One of the finest albums of the year” - Fiona Talkington, BBC Radio 3 Late Junction
