Spell Songs
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Spell Songs
The Spell Songs ensemble is a group of folk musicians originally formed to complement the 2017 book '' The Lost Words'' by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris. History The Lost Words: Spell Songs Their first album was commissioned by Folk by the Oak Festival in 2018, and was released in July 2019. Spell Songs II: Let the Light In Following a gathering of the ensemble at Greta Hall in the spring of 2021, ''Spell Songs II: Let The Light In'' was released in December, and reached number 1 on the UK Indie Breakers Chart The UK Independent Singles Breakers Chart and the UK Independent Album Breakers Chart are music charts based on UK sales of singles and albums released on independent record labels by musical artists who have never made the UK top 20. It is compi ... in the same month. Concerts Jackie Morris paints along with the performances. References External links Official websiteYouTube channel British folk music groups {{UK-band-stub ...
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Karine Polwart
Karine Polwart ( ) (born 23 December 1970) is a Scottish singer-songwriter. She writes and performs music with a strong folk and roots feel, her songs dealing with a variety of issues from alcoholism to genocide. She has been most recognised for her solo career, winning three awards at the BBC Folk Awards in 2005, and was previously a member of Malinky and Battlefield Band. Polwart is currently a member of The Burns Unit, and collaborated with The Fruit Tree Foundation on its debut album, ''First Edition''. Biography Early life and career Polwart grew up in the small Stirlingshire town of Banknock and had an interest in music from an early age. She has described her whole family as being interested in music and one of her brothers, Steven, is also a professional musician who plays guitar in the Karine Polwart band, whilst her sister Kerry is developing her own musical career with the group The Poems. Despite an active musical career from a young age, including forming her own ...
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Julie Fowlis
Julie Fowlis (born 20 June 1978) is a Scottish folk singer and multi-instrumentalist who sings primarily in Scottish Gaelic. Early life Fowlis grew up on North Uist, an island in the Outer Hebrides, in a Gaelic-speaking community. Her mother was a Gaelic-speaking islander from a family of fishermen and crofters which originated on the remote island of Heisgeir, while her father hailed originally from Pitlochry on mainland Scotland. Her parents ran a hotel for many years on North Uist. She moved with her parents to Ross-shire on the mainland when she was 15 years old after her father took a new job. The family lived in Strathpeffer and Fowlis finished her secondary education at Dingwall Academy. She then attended the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow and studied the oboe and the English horn, earning a B.A. in Applied Music in 2000. After university Fowlis attended the Gaelic-language college Sabhal Mòr Ostaig on the Isle of Skye to improve her Gaelic and formally stud ...
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Seckou Keita
Seckou Keita (born 14 February 1978) is a kora player and drummer from Senegal. He is one of the few champions of the lesser-known kora repertoire from Casamance in southern Senegal. Musical career Keita was born in Ziguinchor, Senegal. Through his father he is a descendant of the Malian Keita family of kings, and his mother's family, the Cissokhos, are a griot family (hereditary musicians). He launched his international career in 1996 under the guidance of his uncle Solo Cissokho with appearances at Norway's Forde Festival in a successful collaboration with Cuban, Indian and Scandinavian musicians. In the years that followed, Keita relocated to the United Kingdom, while touring regularly in Spain, France, Portugal, Greece and the Czech Republic as well as playing at such festivals as WOMAD and Glastonbury, both as a solo musician, and in collaboration with acclaimed figures like Indian violinist Dr. L. Subramaniam. Keita developed his work on the kora and with support slots ...
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Kris Drever
Kris Drever (born 31 October 1978) is a Scottish contemporary folk musician and songwriter who came to prominence in 2006 with the release of his debut solo album, ''Black Water''. Drever is the vocalist and guitarist of the folk trio Lau with Martin Green and Aidan O'Rourke. He has worked with other British folk contemporaries, including Kate Rusby, John McCusker, Ian Carr, Eddi Reader and Julie Fowlis. Career Drever was born in Kirkwall, Orkney, where he learned to play guitar and participated in the island's folk festival. In 1995 at age 17 he moved to Edinburgh, where he played at the Tron Ceilidh House several nights a week. He played the double bass for a time but returned to the guitar where his style – "a highly individual blend of rhythm and harmony, folk, jazz, rock and country inflections" – made him a sought after session musician. In late 2000 he began playing alongside Nuala Kennedy and Anna-Wendy Stevenson in a weekly session at Sandy Bell's pub in Edinbu ...
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Rachel Newton
Rachel Newton is a Scottish singer and harpist. As well as playing both acoustic and electric harp she also plays viola, fiddle, piano and harmonium. She performs solo as well as in the bands The Shee, The Furrow Collective and Boreas and was formerly a member of the Emily Portman Trio. She was a member of the Lost Words Spell Songs project and is a co-founder of The Bit Collective, a group campaigning for equality in folk music. Early life Newton was brought up in Edinburgh and learnt harp, fiddle and classical violin. She spoke English at home and Gaelic to her grandfather. At her Gaelic-language school she sang in both English and Gaelic. During the holidays she would stay with her grandparents in Achnahaird, Wester Ross. At fifteen she decided to make a career in music. Musical career Formation of The Shee (2005 – 2011) In 2005 Newton formed The Shee with friends Shona Mooney, Laura-Beth Salter, Amy Thatcher, Lillias Kinsman-Blake and Olivia Ross whom she had ...
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Kerry Andrew
Kerry Andrew (born 5 April 1978) is an English composer, performer and author. She has a PhD in Composition from the University of York and is the winner of four British Composer Awards. Her debut novel, ''Swansong'', was published by Vintage in January 2018 and her second ''Skin'' was published by Jonathan Cape in 2021 She was shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award 2018. Career From age 3 to age 6, Andrew lived in Canada with her family. The family subsequently returned to the UK and settled in the Buckinghamshire area. Andrew earned a BA in Music, MA and PhD in Composition, all from the University of York. Andrew was Composer in Residence at Handel House Museum during 2010-12, and was Visiting Professor of Music at Leeds College of Music in 2015-16 and 2017-18. She won her first British Composer Award in the Making Music Category in 2010 for her choral work 'Fall', and won two awards in 2014, in the Stage Works category for her wild swimming chamber opera 'D ...
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The Lost Words
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the most frequently used word in the English language; studies and analyses of texts have found it to account for seven percent of all printed English-language words. It is derived from gendered articles in Old English which combined in Middle English and now has a single form used with nouns of any gender. The word can be used with both singular and plural nouns, and with a noun that starts with any letter. This is different from many other languages, which have different forms of the definite article for different genders or numbers. Pronunciation In most dialects, "the" is pronounced as (with the voiced dental fricative followed by a schwa) when followed by a consonant sound, and as (homophone of the archaic pr ...
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Robert Macfarlane (writer)
Robert Macfarlane (born 15 August 1976) is a British writer and Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He is best known for his books on landscape, nature, place, people and language, which include ''The Old Ways'' (2012), ''Landmarks'' (2015), ''The Lost Words'' (2017) and '' Underland'' (2019). In 2017 he received The E. M. Forster Award for Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is married to professor of modern Chinese history and literature Julia Lovell. Early life and education Macfarlane was born in Halam, Nottinghamshire, and attended Nottingham High School. He was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge, and Magdalen College, Oxford. He began a PhD at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 2000, and in 2001 was elected a Fellow of the college. Family His father John Macfarlane is a respiratory physician who co-authored the CURB-65 score of pneumonia in 2003. His brother James is also a consultant physician in respiratory medicine. He is married to Ju ...
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Jackie Morris
Jackie Morris (born 1961) is a British writer and illustrator. She was shortlisted for the Kate Greenaway Medal in 2016 and won it in 2019 for her illustration of ''The Lost Words'', voted the most beautiful book of 2016 by UK booksellers. She is a recipient of the Tir na n-Og Award for children's book ''Seal Children''. Life Morris was born in Birmingham in 1961. Her family moved to Evesham when she was four. As a child she was told that she couldn't be an artist, but despite this she learned to paint. Morris went to High school at Prince Henry's High School in Evesham and afterward the Bath Academy of Art. On leaving college she found work in editorial, illustrating magazines like Radio Times, New Statesman, New Society and Country Living. She worked for years illustrating books and in 2016, she was shortlisted for the Kate Greenaway Medal for ''Something About a Bear''. The book includes her water colours of different types of bear. She lives in a small house by the sea in ...
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Greta Hall
Greta Hall is a house in Keswick in the Lake District of England. It is best known as the home of the poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey. Overview The official address of Greta Hall is Main Street, Keswick, but it is located some 150 metres to the north east of the road on higher ground. The house is described by Historic England: Notable tenants and visitors The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge lived at Greta Hall with his family from 24 July 1800 until 1803 and regularly visited William Wordsworth in Grasmere. Coleridge's daughter Sara was born at Greta Hall in 1802. Robert Southey and his wife came to stay with the Coleridges in 1803, and took over the tenancy of Greta Hall when Coleridge left in 1804. Southey lived there until his death in 1843. Greta Hall was visited by a number of the Lake Poets and other literary figures including William Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth, William Hazlitt, Lord Byron, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Sir Walter Scott, Sir ...
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UK Indie Breakers Chart
The UK Independent Singles Breakers Chart and the UK Independent Album Breakers Chart are music charts based on UK sales of singles and albums released on independent record labels by musical artists who have never made the UK top 20. It is compiled weekly by the Official Charts Company (OCC), and is first published on their official website on Friday evenings. The chart was first launched on 29 June 2009, and, according to Martin Talbot, managing director of the OCC, would have benefited acts such as Friendly Fires and Grizzly Bear. History The UK Indie Breakers Chart runs alongside the similar UK Indie Chart. The UK Indie Chart was created in 1978 by Cherry Red Records founder Iain McNay, and, like the breakers chart, lists only albums and singles released by independent record labels in the UK. Until June 2009, a single was classed as "indie" if it was shipped by a distribution service that was independent of the four major record companies: EMI, Sony Music Entertainment, Warn ...
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The Observer
''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper. History Origins The first issue, published on 4 December 1791 by W.S. Bourne, was the world's first Sunday newspaper. Believing that the paper would be a means of wealth, Bourne instead soon found himself facing debts of nearly £1,600. Though early editions purported editorial independence, Bourne attempted to cut his losses and sell the title to the government. When this failed, Bourne's brother (a wealthy businessman) made an offer to the government, which also refused to buy the paper but agreed to subsidise it in return for influence over its editorial content. As a result, the paper soon took a strong line against radicals such as Thomas Paine, Francis Burdett and Joseph Priestley. 19th century In 180 ...
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