Wednesday 14 December 2016, 8pm
“Mantrically strummed guitars, pianos, hovering strings, pump organs alongside a startling voice, at once fluttery and steadfast, that has come out the other side of something, touching transcendence on the way.” – The Guardian
Brigid Mae Power is an Irish singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who, like Judie Sill, Micky Newburyor Linda Perhacs before her, paints her songs in dreamily expansive strokes, transporting earthly compositions into universal and exultant realms. Her self-titled debut on Tompkins Square is a majestic suite of reverb-swathed laments for voice, guitar, piano, accordion, and harmonium, recorded at the Portland studio of key musical foil Peter Broderick. Themes include transformation, change, motherhood, acceptance, strength, courage and trust. In the words of Power, the album is about “trusting if you lose yourself or your way — you can come back”.
Live, Brigid can encapsulate the timeless magic of her songs either solo or as a duo with Peter. Thus far she has toured throughout Ireland, UK and the US together with artists including Lee Ranaldo, Richard Dawson, Alasdair Roberts, Peter Broderick and Ryley Walker.
Over the last decade, C Joynes has ploughed a singular furrow through solo guitar, with a body of work incorporating English folk-tunes alongside North & West African music, and lifting proto-minimalist and improvised techniques from the European classical and avant-garde traditions.
Joynes has released 10 albums to date, including ‘Poor Boy On The Wire’ (2021), his first solo album dedicated wholly to the electric guitar; ‘The Borametz Tree’ (2019), recorded with long-term fellow travellers Dead Rat Orchestra; and ‘The Wild Wild Berry’, a collaboration with singer Stephanie Hladowski (fROOTS Editors Choice Album Of The Year 2012, MOJO Top 5 Folk Albums 2012). He has recorded a number of sessions for BBC Radio 3. He has also played extensively across the UK, Europe and the USA, sharing bills with a broad range of performers including Shirley Collins, Martin Carthy, Marc Ribot, Richard Dawson, Alasdair Roberts, Jack Rose, Josephine Foster, Sir Richard Bishop, Six Organs Of Admittance and 75 Dollar Bill.
Shifting away from the electric guitar of his most recent solo activities, he’s currently exploring the uses of an amplified archtop guitar, exploiting the instrument’s potential for placing intricate parlour music alongside overdriven garage blues throw-downs and the brittle ringing tones of free improvisation.
“As much Conlon Nancarrow and Ali Farka Toure as Blind Lemon Jefferson, the compositional mind at work here can take apparently disparate threads of modernism and ethnic tradition and treat them as though they were all archaic blues styles learnt from dusty 78s.” – BRUCE RUSSELL, THE WIRE
“An inheritor to Davy Graham; a lone operator prone to unexpected collaborations, with a repertoire that crosses continents and timezones with consummate ease, and dashed off with a phenomenal, yet lightly applied technique.” ROB YOUNG, THE WIRE
