Flower of Scotland  is a Scottish song, frequently performed on special occasions and at sporting events as an unofficial national anthem of Scotland.
The song was composed in the mid-1960s by Roy Williamson of the folk group The Corries. It was first heard publicly in a 1967 BBC television series. The words refer to the victory of the Scots, led by Robert I, over Edward II of England at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314.
It has always been a favourite of mine, but it is one of those songs that seems to be either loved or hated by the Scots. My arrangement of the song is very much in a folk tradition but with the added snare drums to give it a military feel, to embody the historic events depicted in the lyrics. 
As well as a guest vocalist who prefers to remain anonymous, I also used a guest fiddle player on the track who performs and records under her stage name “Shimna”

Flower Of Scotland

The Poppy Red is a song written by Owain Park. The words being inspired by the 1918 poem ‘We Shall Keep The Faith’ by Moina Michael, which itself was inspired by John McCrae’s ‘In Flanders Fields’. It was commissioned by the Military Wives Choirs to commemorate the centenary of 1918, the end of the First World War.
I first heard the song in September 2022 at Lincoln Cathedral performed by the Military Wives’ Choir and it immediately stood out for me as a special gem in the evening’s wonderful programme of choral singing. I learned later that the composer, Owain Park, had studied orchestration with John Rutter, while at Cambridge University, before going on to study for a Masters degree in orchestration. This was particularly interesting as I had only recently started work on the recording of a John Rutter song for Christmas 2002 entitled “Angels’ Carol”
I spent several weeks looking at the sheet music for this piece which was written for a full choir, to try and work out how I could slim it down and give it a simpler, more acoustic arrangement. I had a singer in mind to record the vocals having worked with Abby before on three other projects. When I approached Abby with the song, I asked her to listen to the choral version, look at the sheet music and to adapt the harmony parts in her own way to simplify the arrangement. She did this absolutely beautifully and her blend of vocal lead and accompanying harmony parts was stunning.
The arrangement is fundamentally an acoustic guitar accompaniment with some simple cello parts written in to add a little warmth and fullness to the sound. On the more powerful chorus, I added an acoustic bass and some piano to fill out the sound a little more. I changed the beginning of the original song slightly and scrapped the overly ornate ending altogether. In the main, the original song was left in the same key, tempo and structure as Owain Park had written it.
The song was planned to coincide with Remembrance Weekend on 11th and 12th of November 2023.

The Poppy Red

Big Cat Blues - is an original piece played on my Gretsch Electromatic guitar. The main theme which is played three times was probably worked out in the mid-1990s and has sat waiting for a day when I would get around to add more to it and finally record it for posterity. Like most electric blues pieces it is probably made up of many ideas unconsciously stolen from other tunes. The title has no real significance except that I had lots of “big cat” video footage on hand which I thought would work well with the guitar piece.


Big Cat Blues

The Leaving of Liverpool is a well-known traditional folk song, often classified by folklorists as a lyrical lament. Two versions of the song (of which this is one) were collected from oral sources in the mid 20th century and both refer to sailors from Liverpool travelling to California during the gold rush period in the mid-1800s. 

Although I had played this tune on guitar as a slow instrumental ballad for years, I wanted my recording of it this time, to reflect the way I would have heard it back in the folk clubs on Tyneside during the late 1960s and early 1970s.


The Leaving of Liverpool

Since I first picked up a guitar at the age of 14, music has dominated my leisure time. As a teenager growing up in the 60s, I was influenced by the folk music revival in that decade as well as the renewed interest in blues music. Over the years, my love of varying musical genres has fluctuated with the various trends of each subsequent decade, but at heart, my love of the simplicity of acoustic arrangements tends to pervade. 

I am now retired and I am dedicating my remaining years to systematically recording as much of the music that I have played throughout my life as I can remember. My recorded works are put into collections to represent their relevance to me. They are presently:

“The Lincolnshire Poacher” - My earliest recordings in 2012/2013 with a collection of predominantly folk tunes that reminds me of where music playing began for me.

“Backlog” - a random collection of pieces that have become important to me over the last 50 years. Some of them are my own compositions. I anticipate that this collection will eventually be the largest as I gradually remember more and more pieces from my past playing.

“Synergy” - a range of music, both old and new, where I have collaborated with others in their creation

“Legacy” - predominantly pieces from the “classical” music world that have inspired me, and I have wanted to finally arrange in my own way.

“Taking Flight” - new pieces that are all personal compositions.

In all my recordings, the guitar tends to figure as the central instrument. In many pieces I have added other orchestral instrument sounds to enhance the arrangement. These have been created on my Roland digital piano.

New tracks tagged #Ellengowan