BIOGRAPHYNIGEL SHAW
Nigel Shaw is a long-established composer and musician whose journey with music began nearly twenty-five years ago. He is also a wood carver and traditional flute-maker, making many of the instruments with which he performs and records. The inspiration for most of his music stems from the spirit of the land, with its cycles of power, mystery and gentle beauty. In the creation of his albums Nigel uses many ancient instruments including handmade wooden and clay flutes, traditional whistles and recorders, smallpipes, dulcimer, psaltery, Eastern European overtone flutes (including the fujara and the koncovka), many types of drum (including djembe, cahon and darabuka) and percussion. He combines these with sound recordings gathered from nature and contemporary musical instruments such as piano, harmonium and synthesisers, in a powerful fusion of ancient and new to create his unique landscapes of sound and soul-filled melodies as well as the dynamic tribal rhythms of his dance music. For
many years he has been handcrafting flutes using woods
indigenous to Britain, such as yew, holly, thorn, ash
and oak. He carves large wooden masks and totems inspired
by the wild landscape. His most ambitious project to date
has been the building of a large ceremonial Neolithic/Bronze
Age style roundhouse, constructed from granite, oak trees
and rye grass thatch. This sacred house, and a series
of flutes carved from thirteen trees native to this land,
sit at the heart of his recent album DARTMOOR ROUNDHOUSE,
a cycle of flute songs recorded at night around the hearth
fire. CAROLYN HILLYER
Carolyn Hillyer is a composer of strong beautiful songs and raw inspiring chants, and a powerful performer in concert. She sings of ancient spirit and hidden memory, of ancestral roots and the deep experience of women in the weaving of courageous life paths. She has released eleven albums of work to date, both solo projects and creative collaborations with Nigel Shaw. Her songs are renowned for their unique perspective and compelling voice. As well as playing many drums in her performances and recordings, Carolyn is a drum-maker, creating traditional frame drums from skins and other materials sourced both on Dartmoor and during her journeys to the Arctic. She makes many of the instruments that she uses in concert including red deer, horse, reindeer, elk, salmon, horned, paddle, death and other ceremonial drums. Carolyn is an artist, a painter of life-size images of archetypal and mythological women, the mystery cycles of womanhood and the sacred landscape in human form. Her paintings are exhibited within installations that celebrate the deep magic and integrity of the ancestral land - as an artist she is continually fed by the raw energy of the wild hills in which she lives. Her most recent exhibition THE NORTHERN SISTERHOOD OF DRUMS drew closely on her journeys during several winters into the frozen Arctic landscape, combining a life-size council of ancestral grandmothers with ceremonial drums and other shamanic totems gathered around a sacred winter house or traditional northern lavo. Carolyn also writes powerful mythic stories that explain and expand on the symbolism in her paintings and songs: some of her writings have been published as collections and source books both within the UK and Europe. For over thirteen years Carolyn has been leading an ever-evolving programme of workshop journeys based around the themes of her work. They range from large inclusive celebrations of ancestry and pagan spirit, to longer intensive weekends for women at her farm on Dartmoor that establish an environment in which women can be supported and inspired in the exploration of their own sacred landscape and spiritual creativity. Her albums such as WEATHERED EDGE and HOUSE OF THE WEAVERS have become classics, with many of her songs sung by others in chanting groups and dancing circles. CAVE OF ELDERS represents a departure from the rich and complex lyrics of her other work, being an improvised series of wordless songs, whereas the most recent DRUM SONGS FROM THE HEATHEN HILLS concentrates on the powerful union of voice and drum. Her work with the bands RIVEN and GLOBAL, as well as her creative collaboration with Nigel in the ANCESTOR and EXILE projects demonstrates a wilder unleashed approach to both voice and lyrics. DARTMOOR
Dartmoor is an area of wild moorland in southwest England, a mist-veiled landscape of hidden valleys and bare tors where the stone circles and settlements of ancient people exist at the fringes of present time. Nigel and Carolyn have worked on Dartmoor for over fifteen years, living with their family in a traditional longhouse at the centre of the moor. They draw much inspiration for their work from the primordial landscape that surrounds them and in recent years both their music and art have been creatively influenced and expanded by their travels and work alongside musicians and instrument makers in other cultures and lands encompassing northern ice, desert sands, island mountains and western seas. Carolyn and Nigel are internationally known musicians and have performed concerts on many countries including Japan, USA, Russia, Australia, the Arctic, the Baltic States, Jamaica and Central America as well as throughout Europe and the UK. As well as concerts and exhibitions, every few years they organise RIVENSTONE, a unique and intimate festival of sacred world music and ancestral roots held on their farm in Dartmoor. |
