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MARVEL 001CD
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2014 release; released to coincide with the centenary of Dylan Thomas's birth on October 27, 1914. Cerys Matthews writes: "Dylan Thomas was always present in my life -- we shared the same view of the crescent shaped Swansea bay, and my uncle Colin Edwards amassed the largest amount of interviews on him, starting in the years following Dylan's tragic death in New York City. Colin would talk to us about him for hours, and it wasn't long before I too fell for his magical, maverick voice. 'The world is never the same place once a good poem has been added to it'. Said Dylan, who never prefaced his readings with explanations, but rather with a simple 'I am going to read aloud now'. Reading his work aloud, feeling those syllables roll around your mouth with the rhythms finding their own ebb and flow is one of life's greatest pleasures. In Welsh (and similarly in Somali) there is only one word to cover both music and poetry -- the powerful, transformative qualities of each have always lead me to treat them both with a similar approach. I often hear music when I read great writing, especially Dylan's, which is so infused with melody and rhythm, and so the idea for this project was born. Jeff Towns, Chairman of the Dylan Thomas Society, and owner of the one and only 'Dylan Thomas Mobile Book Bus' has written the notes on the poems, excerpts and short story released in this double album and also generously shares with us some of his wonderful collection of Dylan Thomas photographs and illustrations. Choosing the works presented here seemed to come naturally, some are familiar, some more obscure. As for 'A Child's Christmas in Wales'? Well, I've always loved the matrimony of music and narration in Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf and dreamed, many years ago, that 'A Child's Christmas' should also 'dance' with music. Together with composer and arranger Mason Neely from Chattanooga, I began working toward this goal. With the help of some of the country's leading players and soloists -- Catrin Finch on harp, Alice Neary on cello, and David Adams on violin, we made this a reality. Tiger eggs indeed." Includes the whole of A Child's Christmas in Wales and poems including "Fern Hill," "Do not go gentle into that good night," and "And death shall have no dominion."
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MARVEL 002CD
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Ghazalaw, the eponymous debut album from the Wales/India collaboration, is the second album to be released on Cerys Matthews's Marvels of the Universe label. Ghazalaw is a sublime musical meeting between acclaimed Indian ghazal singer and musician Tauseef Akhtar, from Mumbai, and Gwyneth Glyn, from Criccieth, North Wales, one of Wales's leading singer-songwriters. The music is a marriage of two great traditions of love poetry and traditional music: the ghazal singing of the Indian sub-continent and the folk song of Wales. Though the traditions may seem distant at first glance, dig deeper and you'll find that Welsh folk and Indian ghazal evolved from common ancient poetic forms, specifically Sanskrit. Tauseef Akhtar served a ten-year apprenticeship with the greatest ghazal singer of modern times, the "Ghazal King" Jagjit Singh. Gwyneth Glyn is steeped in the linguistic and poetic richness of her homeland, inspired by the landscape of Wales and centuries of tradition. Yet she stands at the forefront of a new Welsh generation keen to seek out and celebrate the many affinities that tie two distant parts of the world together. Akhtar and Glyn are joined from India by Ashish Jha (tabla), Manas Kumar (violin), and Sanjoy Das (guitar), and from Wales by Georgia Ruth (harp, vocals), who earned two BBC Radio 2 Folk Award nominations in 2014 following the release of her 2013 debut album Week of Pines.
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