Workshop and house concert in Edinburgh,Scotland (March 2013)

[Niall Anderson]

Hi all.

This is a "save the date" announcement for anyone in reach of Edinburgh (Scotland) who might be interested in attending a workshop on cittern and bouzouki by Marit Fält, planned for Saturday 16th March 2013. This is being organised by a friend of mine at his home, and will be relatively informal - a 2 hour workshop (or so), a break for some dinner (bring a contribution), concert set from Marit and Rona Wilkie ( fiddle, Young Scottish Traditional Musician of the year 2012) and then quite possibly a session for all who have the energy left over.

Marit is a wonderful låtmandola and cittern player from Sweden, who is now based in Edinburgh after spending time in Newcastle on the traditional music degree programme there. She works with Rona, Karen Young, Vamm, As The Crow Flies and other projects on a regular basis.

Plans are still developing for this, and I'll post more info as it develops. Please do get in touch if you might be interested in coming along - all welcome.

[John Kelly]

Sounds a great idea, Niall. May well be interested in this, and not too far a trip from across the Clyde. Look forward to more info as it becomes available.

[Niall Anderson]

Cheers, John. Will keep everyone posted.

In the short term, here's an interview with some music that Marit and Rona Wilkie did yesterday for Scottish television

http://local.stv.tv/glasgow/going-ou...ctions-return/

It definitely gives a sense of their sound and Marit's style of playing. Hope this works for non-UK IP addresses!

Her låtmandola was made by Christer Adin, incidentally, and has a 3 fret extension on the bass course, plus two fret extensions on the next-to-lowest and top courses, along with pinpoint capos and quarter tone frets.

[zoukboy]

Great stuff, Niall!

[Niall Anderson]

You would be very welcome to our spare room if you wanted to come over, Roger!

[zoukboy]

You would be very welcome to our spare room if you wanted to come over, Roger!

Thank you, Niall! ery kind of you. I would love to come but am tied up with school. BTW, if you get a whack at that Christer Ådin låtmandola I would love to hear a report. :-)

[Niall Anderson]

Roger,

I must confess that I have had a few individual lessons from Marit over the last few months, so have been hearing her instrument up close a bit (although not playing it myself particularly). The first thing that struck me is that it is actually quite a small instrument (relative to my Forster 58cm scale cittern anyway) - not quite as wide in the body, a little shallower and the basic scale length (ignoring the fretboard extensions) must be more like 51cm or so? Off the page like that, I wouldn't have thought it would be that great for the accompanying role, but it sounds great - the nylon strings on the bottom courses allow the instrument to be tuned lower than you would expect, and you get a great bass sound from that bottom course - in fact, it's quite astonishing to hear it being played through a PA (I've been to a couple of gigs Marit has done with different projects, and it's like hearing an acoustic bass guitar). It is really nice to play.

The voicing of the instrument is quite distinctive - you can maybe hear that on the video or you may be familiar with Ale Moller's work (also Adin instruments there)? There's definitely a growl or a rumble to the sound that seems very appropriate to any sort of Nordic music, which always seems to have that "dark" edge to it. I cant quite decide whether I think the voicing/ tone works for Scottish tunes, but it is certainly a unique sound - we think there may be someone in Shetland who has one of these instruments, but that may be it for the trad music community in the UK!

[AP8221]

Marit's Latmandola sounds incredible, especially through a PA, the Low A (same as a Bass's A string) has a lot of power, fwiw I also think her playing is great, quite different to most scottish/irish bouzouki/cittern players but very powerful. The one time I played it I thought that the instrument was quite hard to play, the action seemed pretty high, but the combination of Nylon and steel strings worked surprisingly well.

[Shelagh Moore]

Could very well be interested in this although I play OM (as well as mandolin and others) rather than cittern or bouzouki.

[Niall Anderson]

Could very well be interested in this although I play OM (as well as mandolin and others) rather than cittern or bouzouki.

I'll keep you posted, Richard. There should be at least one, possibly two, other OM's there, so we are using a pretty elastic definition of cittern (cf Sobell).

[Niall Anderson]

Details seem to be settling down for this now. Workshops will be at 4pm (there's a fiddle one with Rona Wilkie too), then house concert at 7.30pm.

I've passed on full details to one or two folk individually, if anyone else is interested in coming along, please do let me know and I'll forward the info off the board.