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This week on Mandolin Mondays we're joined by Belgian multi-instrumentalist Ward Dhoore playing an absolutely beautiful original composition called "Bobby" on his Shippey Axe Octave Mandolin.



Born in Sint-Lievens-Houtem in the Flemish part of Belgium Ward Dhoore grew up in a musical family. Early on he started touring all over Europe, the UK, the US, and Canada with his two brothers Koen & Hartwin Dhoore with the band Trio Dhoore. In February 2020 the trio won a ‘Flanders Folk Award’ for ‘Best Album’ with their album ‘August’. Later, Ward was also active as the guitarist of Estbel. An international project featuring his brother Hartwin Dhoore (diatonic accordion), Leana Vapper (bagpipes & Voice), and Sänni Noormets (Violin, Voice) from Estonia. playing ‘Post Trad’ tunes and songs with influences from both Estonian and Belgian folk music.

Since 2019 Ward has also been a member (Synths & Mandoline) of the band ‘Spilar’. A band that brings songs in the West-Flemish dialect, arranged in a dark, warm atmosphere. In February 2021 they have been nominated during the ‘Flanders Folk Awards’ for both ‘Best Album’ and ‘Best Live Band’. In February 2022 Spilar was nominated for ‘Best Live Band’ at the 2nd edition of the award show.

Together with his artistic soul mate Lander Cardon he started cooperating under the name ‘Zonderland’. Zonderland is an audio-visual project which combines the visual art of Lander and accompanying soundtracks composed by Ward. Lander and Ward met 12 years ago in LUCA, school of arts. This was the starting point of a shared admiration for each other’s work. Since then, they have discovered a mutual appreciation for aesthetics, simplicity and the beauty of the transience of human existence. Throughout the years they have developed a strong friendship as well as a deep artistic connection. There was a strong desire to start a project together in which they would showcase this strong connection and mutual inspiration for one another.

Furthermore, Ward is also the co-founder of the record label Trad Records which became a safe harbor for some of Belgium's most appreciated artists in acoustic roots music.

Here's a word from Ward about the compsotion in this video, "I wrote this tune right after I received the phone call that my grandfather had passed away. Composing music is a magical thing. Sometimes you can spend days working on a piece of music, thinking about where you want to go with it. But sometimes it only takes a few minutes, as with this song. I took my instrument and a few minutes later this melody came to me, straight from the heart to the instrument.
This one is for Bobby.


Be sure to connect with Ward at the links below for more info about his music:

https://www.warddhoore.be/
https://www.instagram.com/warddhoore/
https://www.facebook.com/warddhoore
https://www.youtube.com/warddhoore

And as always, tune in next week for more Mandolin Mondays! Until then...

Happy Picking!
David