November 23 @ 7:30 pm – 10:00 pm
A rare solo concert by Carolyn Hillyer as part of the Travelling The Hag Road event.
Surrounded by the paintings of her new exhibition, Carolyn will perform music from her recently released song album, The Creel & The Crock & The Cauldron, sharing a wonderfully diverse and unique blend of songs ranging from energetic drum chants to sacred soul ballads to comic ditties to ancestral proto-celtic prayers. There will also be an abundance of participatory songs and chants, song weavings and vocal spell bindings!
‘These songs have been gathered into the cauldron of this album over recent years from her workshop journeys, travels in the far north and song adventures with groups of wild women. However, they mostly have been shaped by Carolyn’s personal steps along the hag road, that knotty, gnarly, nebulous route towards being old, older and very old. Crones, it seems, have a lot to sing about!
Sisters of the Braid emerged from our sanctuary land on Dartmoor, a prayer song that evolved during night vigils at the deer camp, near to the early summer birthing ground of red deer. Antlered Woman was found in the far northwest Scottish mountains, where we make many return journeys to solitary autumnal wilderness. The Hagetty Drum and Old Woman Tree were created for Carolyn’s first Book of Hag (Bark) but have not been recorded before. We Drum our Path Through the Heron’s Marsh is central to the story that unfurls in her second Book of Hag (Peat). Song of the Braided River is a beautiful compilation of watery songs, a cord of fluid vocal harmonies. A tribe of enthusiastic singers joined Carolyn in the studio to record the chorus lines of Thank You Women and the entirety of the Hag’s Marching Song – complete with robust cymbals and a suffragette disposition! Far Side of the Fire evolved during a single night as a small group of women held vigil for a departing sister – it is already being absorbed into the collection of songs that we lean into during farewells and transitional moments. And Björnmor Trumma was written in the Arctic, a honouring of the drum maker, the ancient ice and the bear mother who prowls through our primordial dreamscapes.’
This concert is now sold out but we are holding a reserve list in case of cancellation. Please email info@seventhwavemusic.co.uk to be added to this.