Name: An Deran by KismetMusic
Duration: 2 min 33 s
Description: Trad Selkie (seal) song from the Herbrides. Kath, Jackie, Melissa from 'Growing'

Trad Selkie (seal) song from the Herbrides. Kath, Jackie, Melissa from 'Growing'

An Deran

 Kismet is Oxford based contemporary folk group. There are four of us:  Kath Lucas on voice, clarinet, whistles.(www.voicesunlimited.co.uk)  Melissa Holding on voice, piano accordion, piano and koto (Japanese harp) (www.melissaholding.co.uk), Jackie Singer on voice, violin and mandola (www.jackiesinger.co.uk) and Jon Fletcher on voice and guitar (www.jonfletcher.co.uk). Kath, Mel and Jackie have been playing together for ten years now  in and around Oxford, Jon joined in just over a year ago. We mostly play our own compositions and also arrange Celtic and Eastern European folk music to our liking.. We all compose:  Kath writes songs in harmony, usually unaccompanied (and conducts choirs as her day job).  Melissa writes intricate instrumentals.  Jackie writes songs with the mandola, which the others add parts to.  Jon has a solo project so doesn't bring his songs to Kismet, but he contributes a lot of harmony and rhythm ideas.  

Our inspirations largely come from nature  We have settings of Rumi and Kabir poems, Sufi mystics.  We have a lot of material about the cycle of the year and the Celtic festivals (Imbolc, Equinoxes, Solstices etc). We are also very inspired by the work of Helen Chadwick and Ali Burns.

In style we are folk based, but all of us have classical backgrounds to some extent or another, and also jazz leanings.  For us folk tunes and melodies are a springboard for exploration and improvisation.  Sometimes we do free improvisations, with no tunes to speak of.  Dancers and artists tend to enjoy these more than general audiences! We put on a mean ceilidh.

We have responded to a number of commissions:  At the Botanical Gardens in Oxford we wrote pieces about plants from all kinds of angles.  We made music for Oxford Youth Dance based on Lowry paintings. We have colloborated several times with Kath's choir, Voices Unlimied, to put on shows in Charlbury.  In 2010 - 11 we made 'Soundtracks', a song cycle for choir with instrumental pieces inspired by the history of the Cotswold Line. In this we collaborated with poet, Joe Butler.  We seem to work well with an external stimulus, and we love collaborating with other artists.

 Some favourite venues have been The Abbey, Sutton Courteney,  Iffley Village Hall, Holycombe retreat centre in the Cotswolds, Friends Meeting House in Ox and Charlbury, etc.

We have three CDs to our name.  'Growing' is our earliest, with arrangements of traditional tunes and our own songs, many inspired by the Botanical gardens project.  The Dance Goes On is a CD of circle dance music commissioned in memory of a circle dance teacher.  Soundtracks is our music with poems and songs by a community choir.


An Deran

KismetMusic

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