Rich folk tradition
Leading artist films special concert of rarely-heard old melodies
ONE of Wales’ leading exponents of traditional folk singing will feature in a special concert filmed exclusively for a top music festival.
Gwenan Gibbard took her harp to the Sain Studios near Caernarfon to record the concert which will form a key part of this year’s North Wales International Music Festival.
The event is being held in a hybrid format for the very first time and resumes virtually in mid-November.
Gwenan is well known in the Welsh folk music scene as a harpist and singer, performer, composer, and adjudicator and accompanist at a national level.
She is also a prominent figure in Cymdeithas Cerdd Dant Cymru, which promotes a traditional form of Welsh singing with two counterpointed melodies, and several years ago formed a new choir, Côr yr Heli, who specialise in cerdd dant and folk singing.
This year six concerts took place in the festival’s traditional home, St Asaph Cathedral, while others were recorded elsewhere.
All the concerts were filmed and will be available to view online from Monday, November 15.
Born and raised in Pwllheli, Gwenan Gibbard has travelled extensively performing on her own and as part of music projects and has published three solo albums with Sain since 2006.
Gwenan said she has gathered together a collection of rarely-heard folk songs for the concert which has been titled “Wealth and Archives”.
“I found many of them when I carried out research into the contributions of Dr Meredydd Evans and Phyllis Kinney to Welsh folk music. It was interesting to come across the new material and I’m pleased to be able to sing them again, possibly to a whole new audience,” she said.
The discoveries were made after
Gwenan was awarded a Doctoral Scholarship by the National Library of Wales.
It was a collaboration between the Welsh Music Archive at the National
Library of Wales, the School of Music and Media, Bangor University and the Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol, and focused on specific aspects of collecting folk melodies in the second half of the 20th and 21st centuries in Wales.
Gwenan will sing the folk songs to her own harp accompaniment although some of the songs will be sung unaccompanied.
For more on the resumption of North Wales International Music Festival online from November 15 please visit nwimf.com