Ensemble Diaspora - new singles, a video, and Queensland Music Awards recognition

Side project news: over the past 5 years, I’ve been performing clarinet, tin whistles, and singing with a Brisbane multicultural folk music band called Ensemble Diaspora.

I’m well behind on sharing updates (can I blame the global pandemic?) - but, we’ve recorded two singles!

Written by other members of Ensemble Diaspora, singles Ritual and Daffodil Reverie draw on Celtic and Persian folk music. They are available to download/stream at all the usual places. (Except actual streams, rivers or creeks).

1. Ritual
I played clarinet and sang some (very distant) high backing vocals in the recording of this song! I also co-produced and edited the recording with arranger/percussionist Arash Zanganeh - with the great help of staff at The Edge, State Library of Queensland. Guest vocalist Saman Sarami was recorded in Iran by Arash Zanganeh.

The song received a Highly Commended in the World Music category of the 2020 QUEENSLAND MUSIC AWARDS!

Wonderfully unexpectedly, through singer Saman’s connections, the satellite network GEM TV offered to make a video clip for the song! The beautiful video (featuring Saman Sarami) is available to watch on YouTube.

Ritual was written by Ensemble Diaspora members Sebastian Flynn and Arash Zanganeh.

2. Daffodil Reverie
On this track, I played tin whistle and clarinet.

Featuring Grammy-nominated vocalist Tenzin Choegyal, it was composed by Ensemble Diaspora members Martin Reese and Arash Zanganeh, and was inspired by the way that English dance tunes speed up and slow down.

Stream/download now!

'HARMONY': a collaborative Corrs cover

“Let’s live in harmony, harmony”

For a fun side project over the past year, I collaborated with fans of Irish band The Corrs to make a cover of their song Harmony. Seven musicians from six countries recorded themselves singing or playing instruments into smartphones and microphones, and sent their parts over the internet. Before starting, we only knew each other through an an online community called ‘The Corrs Club’, had never met in person (still haven’t), and had little idea of each other’s musical capabilities. This could’ve been a recipe for a very mediocre Irish stew…but it turns out Corrs fans are a musically talented and dedicated bunch! The musical stew far exceeded our expectations!

Harmony is about the troubles in Northern Ireland, unfortunately ongoing, as there were riots in Londonderry just hours before writing this blog on Good Friday. (This day being significant in Northern Ireland’s history for the Good Friday Agreement of 1998). But the highlight of the song for me is an epic, lush, hopeful chorus of voices singing “Let’s put it all behind us, let’s live in harmony”. Wherever you are in the world, that’s an inspiring message, don’t you think?!

I sang lead vocals, played tin whistle and clarinet, and assembled this cover (I’m reluctant to say “mixing” as my skills are basic). I’ve now heard the song hundreds of times, but still find it powerful. And, this collaboration gives it extra meaning. By harmonising with others on the word “harmony”, from four different continents, we’ve literally created worldwide harmony! ;)

Read below to learn how we did it.

Here’s our cover:

And here’s the original version by The Corrs:

THE STORY OF HOW CORRS FANS SANG HARMONIES ON THE WORD “HARMONY” TO CREATE WORLDWIDE HARMONY…

The band’s hiatus
When in 2015, Irish family band The Corrs returned from a ten-year hiatus to release new music, fans worldwide were ecstatic - including this fan. Having been enamoured with their sweet melodies since the late 1990s, The Corrs played a big role in inspiring me to take up songwriting, singing, Irish tin whistle, and to visit Ireland from Australia. 

The Corrs’ previous album, Home, had been released in 2005, and was a return to their Irish traditional music roots. It was an apt ending of an era, covering music from their parents’ old songbooks, but a question mark hung over their future. The band hadn’t officially quit, yet they increasingly took more time away to raise families and pursue other projects. Lead singer Andrea and violinist Sharon developed solo music careers, creating some great music, but there was never quite the same magic that the four siblings had together.

The return (phew!)
Finally, the band announced that they’d recorded a new album, White Light, and I felt excited and relieved, as though,“All is right in the world again”.

The announcement also breathed new life into an online community called ‘The Corrs Club’, a forum which had been running since 1997 (formerly known as the CorrBoard). I joined it in the early to mid 2000s. Today’s internet is infamous for its dark corners, but The Corrs Club has always been a positive online space where fans across the globe could discuss favourite songs, albums, performances, and interviews. Throughout the The Corrs’ hiatus, the forum continued to bubble along, but new music had us energised.

The band’s sixth studio album, White Light, was released in November 2015. The music industry and the internet had changed dramatically since their last release ten years before. Music streaming and digital downloads were the norm over buying CDs; music recording equipment was cheaper and more accessible than ever before, and anyone with a smartphone could record decent-quality sound and send it across the planet within seconds.

The club collaboration
An idea was tossed around in The Corrs Club - should we try collaborating and making our own cover? The technology now would allow it, and there were enough musicians in the group to make it work. The main problem was that we didn’t know what level of musicianship everyone was at, and how, logistically, we’d make it happen. So we decided to play it safe for our first cover, to choose a simple song and to keep the arrangement close to the original. Perhaps in the future we’ll try a punk-hillbilly-flamenco version of Runaway, but not for attempt #1!

After nominating several song ideas, we decided on a beautiful song called Harmony; track 11 from White Light. Lyrically, Harmony is about Ireland’s troubled history. Phrases like “Down Bombay Street, there’s flames at our feet” references the burning down of houses in the 1969 Northern Ireland riots. It has that perfect Corrs’ blend of the traditional with the modern, and the song seemed to match our two main requirements: simple to cover, with the potential to be inclusive.

1. Logistically simple to cover (or so it seemed): Harmony opens with nothing but a synth drone and a single vocal melody reminiscent of Irish airs. Gradually, layers of guitars, drums, tin whistles, violins and other voices are added. It sounds more simple than highly produced songs like Breathless or Summer Sunshine…but perhaps deceptively so. Like Pass the Parcel, we’d unwrap one layer to fine another musical layer, another melody to cover. But that’s all part of the fun!

2. Inclusive: We wanted to feature as many club members as possible, and several people were keen to lend their voices. Harmony seemed perfect for this because at 3.25, it bursts into a giant chorus of voices singing “Let’s put it all behind us, let’s live in harmony, harmony”. I was stopped in my tracks when I first heard that chorus, because it’s so powerful, joyful, and unexpected. I loved the idea of bringing voices together from around the world to recreate that sound.

The puzzle (how on earth do we do this?)
The score for Harmony hadn’t been released to our knowledge, so we had to learn each part by ear. And, none of us lived in the same country, let alone could rehearse together. So, to make our cover sound tight, we decided to record our parts while listening to the original version.

Steve in the US got the ball rolling and cleverly worked out the atmospheric ‘drone’ sound and chords on keyboard. Terry in the UK expertly deciphered the intricate guitar picking, and a killer drum track came from StPaddy (his online name) in Germany which made me think I had to up my game! I recorded four layers of tin whistle parts in Australia, and doubled some parts on clarinet as we didn’t have a violinist between us.

The voices (borrowing a technique from The Punch Brothers)
Recording all the voices was trial-and-error. We asked everyone to listen to the original track while wearing headphones, and record their parts into a microphone or phone. I borrowed an idea from US band The Punch Brothers, who feature their fans’ voices in their song Little Lights at 3.26. On their website, they’d uploaded a demo of part of the song, and asked fans to record themselves singing along. The result is an airy mass of voices, floating underneath the lead vocal. So for Harmony, I recorded myself singing the different vocal harmonies and uploaded them to my website for others to use as a guide. The process still wasn’t perfect, but we made it work! In the end we combined voices from England, France, the US, the Philippines, and Australia. 

The lead vocal (Andrea’s so darn good)
When it came to the lead vocal, I really wanted to attempt it because I loved the folky Irish feel of it. There are other Corrs’ songs that I know I wouldn’t be able to do justice, but this one seemed within reach. Well…I can tell you that Andrea is a really good singer. This is a hard song to sing in tune, and it spans several octaves - yet Andrea sounds so effortless and emotional when she sings it. I recorded hundreds of vocal takes over months, and had to do a lot of practice to be able to reach those low and high notes. Even then, I couldn’t sing them as well as Andrea, and had to edit the best takes together. The upside is that my voice got better and stronger from singing this song on repeat!

The assembly (more cowbell?)
Using Logic Pro, I put all the parts together and would email mixes to Steve in the US to get his opinion (and Terry in the UK towards the end). The more we listened to the original, the more barely-audible melodic motifs we would hear and feel the need to replicate. For a few months, the cover felt it needed a bigger instrumental build. One main problem was that we were lacking Sharon Corr…or any live strings, really, so we improvised! Steve added synth strings and other sounds, and I often doubled them on live clarinet. The combination of sounds gives it its own flavour, but is representative of who we are as a group of musicians around the world, making do with what we have!

The final vision
To visually depict how we came together in spirit, I used a NASA satellite image of earth at night and placed photos or images representing each musician roughly on the countries they are from. Please note: this image is not to scale, otherwise we’d be huge! I had a bit of fun with InDesign’s pen tool to show how we are all connected (inspired by maps of flight paths!). To thematically link it to the White Light album artwork, I used a similar font, and popped the album’s photo of The Corrs in the corner…so they can talk on corners. (That’s a cheesy Corrs joke). I assembled the picture with the song in Premiere Pro and uploaded to YouTube.

The credits
Firstly, thanks to The Corrs for writing this inspiring song. Secondly, thanks to all the patient musicians who contributed musical parts (especially Steve for his huge amount of work as we emailed back and forth dozens of mixes) and general ideas of how to approach this. Thirdly, thanks to general members of The Corrs Club for creating a positive community to talk all things Corrs. This was truly a team effort!

Wendy Lang (Australia) - lead and backing vocals, tin whistle, clarinet
Terry Burbridge (UK) - guitars, backing vocals (outro)
Steve Wang (US) - keyboards
StPaddy (Germany) - drums
BallerinaTay (US) - backing vocals in verses and outro
GaelleF (France) - backing vocals in outro
nightcat (Philippines) - backing vocals in outro
Produced by Wendy Lang, additional production by Steve Wang

---

The lyrics

HARMONY
Music and lyrics by The Corrs

More walls since Good Friday he said
There's nothing good about that
Down Bombay Street there’s flames at our feet
And they burn like the Indian sun

It's a far cry from home you land
Your brothers and sisters behind
This battle scar's long, like a mourning song
You know though you never had learned

Now we'll never know, the man you'd have been
The one who brought peace to a land born in pain
Taught love to a daughter, kindness to a son
But you've ended before you've begun
You've ended before you've begun

And a Main Street became the frontline
My beloved a casualty of time
It's wrong, it's wrong, no matter what side you're on
To end them before they've begun

Now we'll never know, the man you'd have been
The one who brought peace, to a land born in pain
Taught love to a daughter, kindness to his son
But you've ended before you've begun
You've ended before you've begun

We'll never know, the man you'd have been
The one who brought peace, to a land born in pain
Taught love to his daughter, kindness to his son
But you've ended before you've begun
You've ended before you've begun

Let's put it all behind us
Let's live in harmony, harmony

An old Swedish folk song: “I Riden Så”.

In recent months, I've been performing this lovely old Swedish folk song called I Riden Så in Hjarta, my collaboration with Zannah, and also in Ensemble Diaspora. 

Neither Zannah nor I speak Swedish, but this song's melody and harmonies were too beautiful to pass up - so we took on the challenge! The lyrics aren't just in Swedish either; they're in OLD Swedish, mentioning Norse mythology and using pagan symbols. One of my Swedish friends thought this song could be from the Viking era. (Cool!). 

 Zannah and I filmed this little video last week in a practice room at the Queensland Conservatorium. We filmed two takes, and unfortunately my phone cut out at the end of the second take, so I’ve spliced the two performances together in the last verse. If you make it that far - well done!

What’s it all about?

According to this website, the song is full of old pagan symbols, such as a “grey horse” which is a metaphor for death. The site translates the song’s title I Riden Så to “Ride Gently Through the Sacred Grove With Her”, but I've also seen it translated to "Ye Ride So Carefully". It tells the story of a man called Silibrand who sees his daughter coming towards him in a linden grove. Silibrand says “O woe is me” (“A välest mej”) because he seems to be in the afterlife, and he knows his pregnant daughter (or at least her babies) may soon be joining him. He spreads out his blue cape “under the linden so green” and his daughter gives birth to twin sons. One son is given to Freyja, the Norse goddess; the other to Valhalla, a “hall of the slain” in Norse mythology.

Where did we find it?

A friend on facebook originally introduced me to the music of Myrkur, a Danish singer/composer/multi-instrumentalist with a background in heavy metal music. Recently, she’s been releasing simple videos of old folk songs, performed acoustically in idyllic Scandinavian landscapes.

I've been captivated by all of Mykur's folk music videos, but I particularly loved the sweet, lilting vocal melody of I Riden Så, which she plays on mandola in a dark green forest. Singing like a bird - and literally singing WITH the birds - her ethereal vocal style reminded me of Celtic singing, a favourite of mine. So, I set myself the challenge of learning this gorgeous song.

Mykur’s version is only part of the whole song, and was inspired by a 1997 recording by Finnish band Gjallarhorn, which features a rocking instrumental section. Seriously. 

The idea of singing in Swedish didn't seem impossible. I’d been taking some beginner Swedish lessons on DuoLingo, and had a very basic idea of how Swedish vowels sounded. For example, Swedish people seem to accent the second syllable of words, whereas us Aussies fall off words like children on a the edge of a couch. (Ouch!).

It was no easy task, though. Learning the song took…months! Myrkur sings with a Danish accent, and Gjallarhorn’s singer is Finnish, so I didn't have a Swedish version to learn from. I nagged a Swedish friend for weeks to help me with pronunciation. When I first played it to him, he was astonished at how old it was. And, he didn't laugh at my first attempt. Good sign! 

Thankfully, I could wrap my head around most of the words, as there are several similarities to English. “Min fader” (my father), “Min syster” (my sister), and “Min brooder”, (my brother) are pretty self-explanatory. The word that still has me in a spin, however, is “sju” (seven). It uses a consonant which doesn’t appear in the English language, and my Swedish friend reassured me that it takes people years to learn. I suspect only magical beings can make that sound, but I've done my best for now. 

I hope you enjoy this! 

 

Happy St Patrick's Day...and GIG ALERT!

Happy St Patrick's Day all! 

I hope you are all wearing green and listening to an Irish jig wherever you are!

You know I love to play the tin whistle, and to sing Irish and Scottish songs...so here is a video I recorded recently with my friend Susanna O'Leary (aka Zannah). 

It's of the traditional Irish/Scottish song "Parting Glass" which was sung at gatherings of friends, at the end of the night. (I'm a bit unclear whether it came from Scotland or Ireland - I think both countries lay claim to it - but correct me if I'm wrong!).

We recorded this very quickly in a practice room at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music. After a few false starts, having to change rooms, trying to get the phone/tripod to work, we literally had five minutes left and managed to get this take! Susanna sounds fab but my singing could definitely be better. At least the tin whistle is okay!

We'll be singing this song and more at some upcoming performances in Brisbane's Queen St Mall! Susanna and I have formed a duo, calling ourselves "Hjarta", which is an Icelandic/Faroese word for "Heart". We wanted to sing Celtic and Scandinavian music, plus original music inspired by those musical cultures. I literally spent days trying to find words that might have some commonalities in both Gaelic languages and Scandinavian languages...but many of those words don't sound particularly elegant, or are about very practical things, like fishing. 

But since Iceland and the Faroe Islands have influences from both cultures, it seemed fitting to use a word from those languages! Also, Susanna and I both loved that it meant "heart". 

We have some performances coming up, and will be singing and playing music from these regions, as well as our own original songs that are influenced by these musical cultures.

🎶HJARTA PERFORMANCE DATES 🎶

Queen Street Mall, Brisbane

Wednesday 11 April 2018
With guest Martin Reese (mandolin) and another to be confirmed!
12pm, 1pm, 2pm
5pm, 6pm, 7pm
(half hour sets)

Sunday 22 April 2018
With guests Martin Reese (mandolin) and Donald McKay (bodhran)
12pm, 1pm, 2pm
(half hour sets)

Free to attend, open to all.

See you there!

Gig Alert: Ensemble Diaspora at Mosaic festival

When: Sunday 8th October 2.30pm-2.45pm
Where: Roma Street Parkland, Dance Stage (Celebration Lawn)
What: Performing with Ensemble Diaspora for the MOSAIC festival
Tickets: No tickets needed, entry is by gold coin donation

This Sunday, I'll performing with Ensemble Diaspora for the Mosaic festival - and I'm excited! It will be a big, colourful festival in the lush green surrounds of Roma Street Parkland, with a smorgasbord of multicultural music and dance performances, plus markets, food and more. 

Our set will only run for 15 minutes - but it'll be 15 minutes of joy! I'll be playing clarinet mostly, with a bit of tin whistle, plus singing songs in Farsi and Dari (the latter being a Persian language from Afghanistan). To answer your question (I know you're thinking it) - no, I don't speak those languages, I learnt how to sing the songs from my bandmates. 

If you like Loreena McKennitt's album "An Ancient Muse", I think you'll like our sound.

Playing music with these guys is a lot of fun, so I'm really looking forward to it. Come along!

A Galician tune, performed at Music By The Sea

In early September, my multicultural music group Ensemble Diaspora performed at Sandgate Town Hall, as part of the beloved Music by the Sea series that is held there once a month. 

This was the first time I'd ever performed in Sandgate - and was blown away by how enthusiastic the audience was. I was told it was a full house! A concert of Middle Eastern, Eastern European, and Celtic folk music might be seen as "niche", but the audience seemed to love every minute of it - calling for an encore at the end! 

In addition to our usual Ensemble Diaspora setlist, we broke into duets and trios throughout. Here is a video of Martin Reese and I playing a Galician tune. I don't even know the name of this tune. I heard it played by an Irish musician named Adrian Jeffries at an Irish music session around a decade ago, which I recorded and learnt. Thankfully, Martin somehow knows the chords, so two days before the show, we decided to perform it! (Well, I decided, and Martin was happy to play it, because he is a legend. Between the beautiful acoustics of Sandgate Town Hall, and the talents and care of the wonderful sound technician - I think it sounded rather lovely! 

Thanks to Music By The Sea for asking us to perform and for capturing this video.

And, thank-you to our audience at Sandgate It was a blast!

Behind the scenes of the "Somehow (You Always Leave Me In Tears)" video shoot

Ever since recording my song Somehow (You Always Leave Me In Tears) for the Independent Music Project, my friend Nathan Hoad has been volunteering to make a music video.

Inspired by my lyric "to the sea where we met", his idea was to film on the beach in Shorncliffe, a quiet, seaside suburb on the outer edges of Brisbane. His heart was set on filming along the historic and rustic Shorncliffe Pier, one of the longest timber piers in Australia, which reaches over 300 metres into the beautiful Bramble Bay.

The song, if you haven't noticed, is pretty darn melancholy. This meant we had to wait until the weather was moody and grey. But this last summer in Brisbane has been relentlessly long, hot, and full of matte blue skies. In any other situation this may be considered idyllic - I'm sure there are about 9 million people in Sweden who are incredibly jealous right now - but it wasn't the right setting for the song. After all, who can be sad under a blue sky? We didn't want viewers to think, "Look at the weather, woman! Get over that guy you're singing about and go for a swim!". No. We wanted the viewer to feel the emotion of the song. To think, "Now THAT'S a dreary sky. No wonder she's miserable. I'll make her a cup of tea.".

So, one Sunday afternoon in February, when autumn was wandering up the footpath and the weather forecast yelled "Clouds!", Nathan, his partner in crime Lilly Piri, and I, drove up to Shorncliffe. (Well, Nathan drove, and I sat in the back fiddling with my nail polish).

We arrived to discover the weather there was PERFECT! Layers and layers of thick grey clouds. Rain-free. More wind than a wind machine on a Beyonce set. 

I was really excited. Then, I heard disappointment coming from Nathan's corner. "The one thing I really wanted to film was the jetty". We looked over and saw that Shorncliffe Pier was closed off, surrounded by the plastic orange skirting indicative of construction sites. Apparently, a wooden pier that was built in the 1880s needs a bit of mending every now and then, assumably to stop small children from falling through mouldy wood. Fair enough.

Plan A: Thwarted by the Shorncliffe Pier Renewal Project.

It was time for Plan B. If only there was another jetty-type structure nearby! 

Plan B: More edgy. More rocky. More chance of me falling into the ocean.

And if only there weren't children playing on this other structure! You know, the sort of children who would have fallen through the mouldy wood of our Plan A Pier if it weren't closed for renovation! They'll get bored soon and leave. What should we film in the meantime?

Nathan filming a rock...because...TEXTURE.

Shorncliffe beach isn’t your typical Queensland beach. There’s sand, but it’s not the pristine creamy type you’d see on the Gold Coast. It's much darker. But what it does have, is rocks. Lots and lots of beautiful rocks, in 49 shades of grey. Lilly suggested we keep an eye out for animals on the beach, and we found a delightful little crab, nestled in between rocks. I'd like to thank Annabel Crab - or Leonardo Di Crabrio, as I'm not sure of its gender - for appearing in the second shot of the video. 

We'd decided in advance to film the video in slow motion, so that the movement of the waves and the wind would look more dramatic. I also wanted to try that special music video technique where the artist is seen singing in time to the music while his or her body moves in slow motion. Coldplay's Yellow is a good example of this.

How is the effect achieved? The singer mouths along to a sped-up version of the song while the video is filmed at a slower frame rate. It's then stretched in the edit suite, and voila! Mouth in time, hair gracefully blowing in the wind. 

Weather forecast: Hair rotation 180 degrees.

You may notice in the video that I’m carrying a tiny silver handbag. I was secretly carrying my phone, which had a version of the song at double-speed. When Nathan was ready to film, I’d hit play in iTunes, pop it back into the bag, and sing along. 

This is harder than it looks, because even a slow song that’s been doubled in speed sounds FAST! I spent at least an hour the night before practicing at the new speed, and it felt very strange not being able to sing long notes. All my singing standards had to be thrown out the window, just so I could get my mouth around those sprinting-leopard words. My next release will be rap.

When the kids left our Plan B jetty, we raced up there and Nathan filmed me walking along it, back and forward. It was so windy up there that Nathan had to hold down his tripod and my hair was performing an interpretive dance.

Sneaky team selfie.

Finally, Nathan filmed me sitting on the edge of the jetty, staring at my necklace as though it had an important meaning. And it kind of does. It was a handmade item I bought from the South Bank Young Designers Markets at least six years ago. I love its whimsical design reminiscent of Celtic illustration, and it's been all around the world with me. As a possible ending, we filmed me pretending to throw it into the ocean, but I'm morally against flinging sinkable objects into the sea. 

Nathan took the footage away and a very speedy two days later he showed me the clip! A big thank-you to both Nathan and Lilly for their hard work on this. You can check out their other artistic endeavours at their Little Nebula YouTube Channel. 

As for the song, did you know you can buy it? Or stream it? Find it on Bandcamp, iTunes, Spotify, and an ocean of other places. 

Thanks for reading, watching and listening!