Buy tracks from album “Echo”

You can now buy the tracks off my mini-album Echo – name your price.

Circle Dance and Beaver Song

(Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov)

I play this excerpt from Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera “Snow Maiden” (1881) on domra, a traditional Russian string instrument.

Snow Maiden, a daughter of Spring Beauty and Grandfather Frost, falls in love with a man, which tragically leads them both to death, but also ends the 15-year-old winter, to the joy of everyone.

Circle Dances are a vital part of spring and summer pre-Christian communal celebrations in Slavic lands. One of their uses was prompting the water goddesses, Vily (Rusalki) to help plants grow.

 

Kostroma

(Traditional)

Kostroma (the title of the second track on Echo) is a straw effigy of a woman, for which Russian peasants organised funeral ceremonies on the verge of Summer. Special songs and dances were performed. Finally, accompanied by mourners, the effigy was either drowned or torn to pieces over the fields. It seems that Kostroma represented the life cycle of flax, and the ritual aimed to restore fertility of the earth for the next year. I play kanjira, frame drum and clay whistle on this track.

The song is traditional Russian and the rhythm comes from the Middle East.

Mini-album Echo

I have released a mini-album entitled Echo, on which I had been working with my husband Duncan for some time.

I have dedicated this album to the late Layne Redmond, from whom I learnt frame drumming and women’s spirituality.

Echo reflects the voices from the past. Sounds from the Slavic and Middle Eastern lands interweave.

This mini-album contains a traditional Russian song, a traditional Ukrainian song, a fantasy based on an Medieval Old Slavic epic poem, a take on a classical piece, and vocalising to a frame drum.

On the album, I play frame drum and domra, and sing. Other than that, the album is largely electronic, apart from Duncan’s playing guitar for the bonus track.  I learnt domra in a Soviet music school, from a wonderful teacher Tamara Aleksandrovna Petrova. Two of her pupils became professional musicians – and that’s just from my year and one above.

On the cover photo, I wear a traditional Ukrainian shirt, which was hand-embroidered by my late Grandmother, Efrosinya Matveevna. She lived in a village in the Vinnitsa Region of Ukraine, where she brought up six sons.

For the cover image, I used my watercolour that I call “Mediterranean Peace”.

I thank Duncan for composing additional music and electronic effects in addition to recording and producing the album. I thank Miranda Rondeau, a prominent frame drum musician and teacher, for giving me permission to record her composition. Furthermore, my thanks go to Andrew for taking the cover photo.