Blogs
BRYN YEMM
sensational new album - released 1 December 2017
ACROSS THE BRIDGE
an album of songs to inspire & lift your spirit
to reflect upon treasured memories of loved one
“ Across the Bridge”
the latest album release from
international best selling artist
Bryn Yemm
“Listen to ‘Safe N Sound’ it expresses all our wishes for a dear one who has passed”.
“I have gathered one of the most talented teams in South Wales to perform on and produce this album. It was recorded at Nick Brine’s Leeders Vale Studios – Nick is a young dynamic producer who already worked with Oasis, Thunder and Chapel Row after learning his craft at Rockfield Studios. Nick was assisted with ‘mixing and mastering’ by talented sound engineer Jon Constantine”.
“Adding an extra dimension to the vocals are the amazing Katy Dann and the Kidz R Us choir; they truly enrich this album”.
“I have recorded an album of songs to inspire, to lift your spirit, to reflect upon treasured memories of loved one”.
Saint David of Wales Episcopal Church, 2800 SE Harrison St, Portland, Oregon 97124
The Welsh Society of Oregon (WSOR) celebrates Christmas in song and story, bringing together Welsh vocal and instrumental music of the season along with a reading of the classic Welsh Christmas tale, "A Child's Christmas in Wales." Suggested donation is $10.
The musical program features the WSOR's own choir (directed by Dr. Jamie Webster ) singing carols and other seasonal music old and new in Welsh and English. Joining them will be special guests Three Pound Note, Portland's only Welsh folk music band, an ensemble of pipes, fiddle, and other traditional instruments, and the delightful vocal harmonies of Andrea Wild and Hugo Glanville . To top the evening, and continuing a longstanding Portland tradition, Jonathan Nicholas will give a reading of Dylan Thomas’ much-loved Christmas tale.
The Welsh Society Choir draws on the rich traditions of choral singing in Wales, long known as “the land of song.” In addition to the very successful annual Christmas Concert, the choir also holds a Noson Lawen , a night of fun and singing, every June. They also occasionally sing at the Gymanfa Ganu (Welsh hymn singing festival) at Bryn Seion Welsh Church, and at other events during the year such as the Samhain Celtic New Year Festival in Salem. Dr. Jamie Lynn Webster also directs the Portland Revels’ ViVoce Women’s Ensemble and the Chautauqua Community Chorus.
Three Pound Note features two ex-pats from the UK, both of Welsh descent. Andrea Wild and Hugo Glanville have a broad and engaging repertoire of traditional folk music from their native homeland. The two have merged with uilleann piper and fiddler, Preston Howard and award-winning multi-instrumentalist, Zac Leger to blend vocal harmonies, bouzouki, guitar, fiddle, whistles and pipes using elements from Welsh, Breton and Cornish music traditions. They deliver the audience a rare opportunity to hear lively arrangements of Welsh folk music performed in the Welsh language.
Jonathan Nicholas is an author, journalist and avid storyteller, and is well-known for writing a column in The Oregonian for 25 years. He was born and raised in the valleys of south Wales “just up the road” from Swansea where Dylan Thomas as born
The Welsh Society of Oregon celebrates and perpetuates Welsh heritage, culture and music in Oregon and the Northwest. The WSOR is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization.
AmeriCymru: Hi Dion and many thanks for agreeing to this interview. What can you tell us about The Routines? How did you settle on the name?
Dion: Well, we are The Routines, a three piece from Caernarfon in North Wales. I play guitar and sing, we've got Jamie on Bass and Gethin on Drums and backing vocals. We grew up together through school but only started playing music together around 2014. We formed the band in 2015, playing locally while taking that time to write as many songs as possible. The name comes from the everyday lives of people around us. We all work 9-5 jobs and a lot of what we wrote revolve around the characters we see while following the daily routines of jobs.
AmeriCymru: Care to tell us something about your recent single releases?
Dion: We have just finished recording a set of 3 Welsh singles. The first of those is called 'di Arfar which translates to 'used to this'. A song about the mundanity of a 9-5 job, not really living. The song was released on all major digital stores and streaming services on the 31st October. The video for 'di Arfar can be found on our facebook page and on our youtube channel. We were able to use the factory that Geth works in to film the video, which, for us, was a nice touch. We also have released videos for two English songs via Youtube previously, 'Chrsitening' and ' Twice In A Blue Moon' which remain to be favourites in our live shows. Two more Welsh singles to be released in the coming months with a view to get back to the studio to record our first English album in 2018.]
..
AmeriCymru: You have played in the US before. Care to tell us something about your experiences?
Dion: Well between Feb 2014 and sometime in April 2015, I actually was living out in California. I was playing a lot of solo shows at that time in places like The Riptide and Neck Of The Woods in San Francisco as well as The Starry Plough in Berkeley. I met a lot of brilliant musicians out there such as Jeff Desira and Vessna Scheff who continue to release really interesting tunes. I also used to busk quite regularly around San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf meeting all kinds of weird and wonderful people. I played a few times down in LA and San Jose while out there. For a few months before heading back to Wales I lived in New York state too, playing on Caroline Street and at Cafe Lena in Saratoga Springs was a highlight. Although I would love to go back there and play a decent rock n roll show with The Routines as I know that town loves a loud, 100mph show, The amount of acoustic talent for a small town was unbelievable.
AmeriCymru: Any plans to revisit the US?
Dion: We all would love to go and play some The Routines shows out in the US and we've received an offer a while ago from a place in Big Sur, California, which is a place that reminded me a lot of Wales while I was out there if I'm honest, but unfortunately, we were unable to travel to fulfill that show at the time. We are most definitely open to play some US shows while I think working with a promoter out there for a tour sounds like something that would really work for us to be able to make that happen.
AmeriCymru: Where can people buy your music online?
Dion: Everything's available on our website iawncont.com
AmeriCymru: Care to tell us a little about the Welsh language music scene in your part of Wales?
Dion: Well, to be honest we are quite new to the Welsh music scene really as we have only released one Welsh language tune to date. We are hearing a lot more Welsh bands than we knew we around so it seems to be having a resurgence while there are a lot of Welsh music festivals happening each year alongside the Eisteddfod and other various things.
AmeriCymru: What's next for Dion Jones and the Routines?
Dion: Gigs, Gigs and Gigs. We are currently working our b***s off behind the scenes booking as many shows for 2018 as possible. A couple more Welsh tunes on the way which are ready to go and hopefully we'll be able to record and finish our first album not too late in 2018.
AmeriCymru: Any final message for the readers and members of AmeriCymru?
Dion: Keep your eyes on us for the coming months as a visit out there I feel is inevitable. I experienced the Welsh stuff you have out there and was extremely surprised at the amount of people who could also still speak Welsh. We feel you here at home. Iechyd Da.
The volume Flowers of Wales published this week by Y Lolfa is the life work of botanist Goronwy Wynne, a leading Biology lecturer and life long member of the British Botanic Society.
The book, which spans almost six hundred pages, covers all known Welsh plants in an ambitious hardback volume.
‘This volume is the fruit of a lifetime’s labour’ said Professor Deri Tomos, ‘As well as being a prestigious catalouger, Goronwy Wynne is one who is passionate about what is behind the romantic facade of nature.’
Twm Elias was also amazed by the book.
‘The book is presented in a compact, easy-to-understand style and is a pleasure to read. Goronwy is one of the best Welsh botanists, and is a great communicator and writer,’ he said, ‘We see the expert's authority at its very best here, in a volume that has clearly taken a lot of years of careful research and writing’.
This is the first Welsh volume to try to present the history of every single Welsh plant.
The volume discusses their names, distribution and habitats. The ecology of plants is cited – from the ordinary to the rare. The reader is given a tour of all of the old counties of Wales describing ten sites in each county, with their special features and flowers, and how to find them flowers and appreciate them.
After graduating in Agriculture and Botany at Bangor University, Goronwy Wynne taught at his old school at Holywell, then became Principal Lecturer in Biology at the North East Wales Institute. He received a doctorate degree from the University of Wales and Salford University and is a Fellow of Bangor University and the London Linear Society. He has been a cataloguer for the British and Irish Botanic Society for forty years and editor of Y Naturiaethwr for the Edward Llwyd Society for ten years. In 2014 he received the National Eisteddfod's Science Medal.
The book will be launched Friday 1 December at 7.30pm at Stamford Gate Hotel in Holywell with Ieuan ap Sion, Bethan Wyn Jones, Austin Savage and Goronwy Wynne.
Blodau Cymru – Byd y Planhigion by Goronwy Wynne (£39.99, Y Lolfa) is available now.
Dark Territory by American-born and Wales-based author Jerry Hunter is set in the seventeenth century around the period of the English Civil War, and highlights the fact that the violence associated with religious extremism is not a new issue.
‘It is relatively well known that during his bloody military campaign in Ireland Oliver Cromwell approved the wholesale slaughter of civilians in Wexford and Drogheda because they were Catholics,’ said Jerry Hunter, ‘but less attention has been given to another massacre suffered at his forces’ hands.’
‘This is the story of the Women of Naseby, a dark episode of Welsh history which has been surprisingly absent from popular histories,’ he said.
After the Battle of Naseby in June 1645 the Parliamentarian cavalry, in pursuit of fleeing Royalists, came upon the Royalist camp and a large group of women. Hearing them screaming in an unknown tongue, the English soldiers assumed they were Irish Catholics, and cut them down in cold blood.
But in fact these women were crying out in Welsh – most of Wales had declared for the King, and these were the wives of soldiers in Welsh Royalist regiments who had followed their husbands to war to cook and wash for them, as was the custom at that time. Despite over a hundred of them being killed on the spot, and the faces of others mutilated, their fate has largely been forgotten.
Dark Territory ’s protagonist is a zealous Welsh Puritan whose beliefs initially lead him to embrace Parliament’s cause and the violence of Cromwell’s New Model Army, but whose conviction is tested by these atrocities.
Described as ‘an epic historical adventure set during one of the most turbulent periods in history’, the novel also poses questions about violence, power, religious extremism and rejection of difference which are chillingly relevant to our world today.
Jerry Hunter was born in Cincinnati, USA and is now is a Professor of Welsh and Pro Vice-Chancellor at the University of Bangor, and lives with his family in North Wales.
‘With this novel I also wanted to cross-examine the ideological foundations of “American Exceptionalism”,’ he explained. ‘For centuries politicians in the USA have referred to the nation as a “shining light” for the rest of the world to follow. Through the prism of fiction, this work examines the dark realities at the foundations of those beliefs.’
‘Particularly now in the age of Trump, when the old myths of exceptionalism are being invoked once again in an attempt to “make America great again”,’ he added.
The novel has already received acclaim, with literary critic and author Jon Gower praising it as ‘the work of a master... nothing less than a classic’.
Jerry Hunter is best known as a Welsh-language author and has won prestigious literary awards including Welsh Book of the Year for his academic work Llwch Cenhedloedd , and the National Eisteddfod Prose Medal for his first novel, Gwenddydd .
Dark Territory by Jerry Hunter (£9.99, Y Lolfa) is available now.
Porter Square Books in Cambridge Mass
Friday, May 25, 2018 - 7:00pm
Also featuring translator Pat Ford, former chair of Celtic Languages and Literatures department at Harvard.
Portsmouth Athenaeum in Portsmouth NH
Sunday, May 27th 2018 - Time TBD
Sponsored by RiverRun Bookstore
Harvard Coop Bookstore, Cambridge MA
Friday, October 5, - 7:00 p.m
Jerry will be participating in the Harvard Celtic Colloquium
Am Newid by Dana Edwards follows main protagonist Ceri who returns to her childhood home but has changed a lot since she left. She goes to join Merched y Wawr and despite being a woman, the fact that some still think of her as a ‘boy’ mean that it is not easy for them to accept her.
But Ceri isn’t the only one who’s changed. Over the past twenty-five years, her community’s language, culture and attitudes have also changed.
‘I wanted to write something that was contemporary but that would also demonstrate a timeless attitude shown towards people who are deemed different or who don’t conform to our idea of ‘normal’,’ said Dana Edwards.
‘Issues on gender and sex appear in the press almost daily – schools change their toilets to be unisex, policemen change their outfits to also become unisex, and the discussions on abolishing the need to state your sex in the next census. So I thought that writing about this would be both timely and relevant.’
The novel looks at how Ceri copes with the change in her world, how the world copes with Ceri, and the change that comes when she decides to settle down once again in west Wales.
‘In the past, Welsh novels have been accused of being old fashioned,’ said Dana, ‘but I do hope that Am Newid , amongst many other contemporary Welsh novels, prove that that isn’t true anymore.’
Said author Lleucu Roberts, ‘ Am Newid is a compelling, easy to read novel and Dana Edwards has shown herself to be a capable author who knows how to weave a plot and develop characters.’
The novel will be launched at the Winter Fair in Builth Wells on Monday 27 November at 2pm at the Merched y Wawr stall at Clwyd Morgannwg Exhibition Hall with Tegwen Morris, Merched y Wawr director, who will be in conversarion with Dana.
‘Its very appropriate to launch at the Merched y Wawr stall as the organisation is the backdrop to Ceri’s story,’ said Dana, ‘Merched y Wawr has a reputation for being a very welcoming and inclusive organisation, but how will Ceri be welcomed?’
During the launch, Carol Nixon will talk about her experiences of living as a trans woman in Wales and singer Siân James will perform a few songs that celebrate diversity. There will be a rainbow LGBT+ cake and mulled wine to close the launch party.
Dana Edwards is from Aberystwyth. Am Newid is her third novel following The Other Half (Accent Press, 2014) and Welsh novel Pam ? (Y Lolfa, 2016).
Am Newid will be launched at the Merched y Wawr stall at Clwyd Morgannwg Exhibition Hall at the Winter Fair in Builth Wells on Monday 27 th November at 2pm with Dana Edwards, Tegwen Morris, Carol Nixon and Siân James.
Am Newid by Dana Edwards (£7.99, Y Lolfa) is available now.
Launch of the First all Welsh Language dating app.Its free to download
By Arfon Williams, 2017-11-24
The Tates release new single 'Water' FFO: 1975, Duran Duran, New Order, MGMT
By Ceri Shaw, 2017-11-20
The Tates release their new single 'Water' on the 1st of December as a digital download through Libertino Records.
‘Water’ , the brightly infectious new single by Welsh five-piece The Tates , has been eagerly anticipated after the success of the band’s debut release ‘Electric Girl’ . The song was supported by Huw Stephens, BBC Introducing, Radio 1 and gained Amazing radio playlisting as well as being A-listed on BBC Radio Wales.
Energized by their summer tour in support of ‘Electric Girl’ a confident and inspired band returned to the studio in Cardiff to work with producer Steffan Pringle ( Estrons, Himalayas, Future Of The Left ) again. They emerged with a sense of purpose with a song that will redefine 'The Tates' as the torch-bearers of a new sound, a sound that ranges from The Libertines ’ poetic raw energy to the death disco of early New Order and the fuzzed day-glow pop melodies of MGMT .
Lyrically ‘Water’ asks a poetic question exploring themes of nature over nurture, as Tom the guitarist explains: “Are the flaws that we share with our parents who we are, or have we learnt from them? Are we free to be the people we want to be or are we trapped by our genetic makeup and our immediate environment and society?” I t is testament to the band that with their unwavering belief in the pop song they are in full control of their chosen genre - they make the pop song theirs. 'The Tates' build from the ground up, step by step until they can reach the stars.
LINKS
https://www.facebook.com/TheTa
Print/Digital PR contact: Bill Cummings
(Sound and Vision PR) soundandvisionpr@gmail.com
www.soundandvisionpr.com
Gareth Thomas moved to the Vale of Glamorgan six years ago following a career in England as an actor, teacher and director.
Like many others he had heard of Iolo Morganwg but knew little of his story or significance.
His imagination was fired by the attention given to ‘Old Iolo’ in the National Eisteddfod in Llandow and visits to the places in the Vale associated with the bard such as his memorial in the church in Flemingston, the Samson Pillar in Llantwit Major, St Mary Church where he was married, the examples of his work as a mason that can be seen across the Vale and Cowbridge and The Bear Hotel where Iolo performed much of his seditious verses and delivered passionate speeches on political issues.
‘The more I learnt, the more I marvelled at his story’ said Gareth Thomas, ‘It’s a tale that needs to be told.’
But Iolo proved to be an enigma. There were differing opinions amongst his friends on the subject of Iolo - some of whom admired him as a hero who helped form the national identity of Wales and others who saw him as a cheat and con-man. Having read the research of Gwyneth Lewis, Geraint Jenkins, Mary-Ann Constantine and others, Gareth came to the conclusion that here was a story with real contemporary significance.
The result is Myfi Iol o , a new Welsh language historical novel which recounts Iolo’s true story which is published this week.
The novel is set at the end of the 18 th century where Iolo is a young man with a host of talents and limitless energy. He is full of anger against the injustice he sees and is committed to the cause of freedom in Europe.
‘Iolo’s story has every element you would wish for in an historical novel: adventure, mystery, love, revolution, violence, drugs, passion, spies and betrayal’ said Gareth.
The scene moves from Cowbride to the grand drawing rooms of Mayfair, from Gorsedd ceremonies on inhospitable hillsides to the luxurious bordellos of Covent Garden, from his cottage in Flemingston to a hearing before the Privy Council in Downing Street.
‘Here was a man who inspired friendship but turned friends into enemies. Here was an incredibly talented man who ultimately failed to win a livelihood in any field.’ said Gareth, ‘Was Iolo a conscious trickster – or was he inspired by a bigger vision?’
The novel has already recieved substantial praise by the author Dr Mary-Ann Constantine calling it ‘a fasincating novel about a fasinating person’.
The novel will be launched in the Georgian ballroom in the Bear Hotel in Cowbridge on November 23 at 7pm.
‘It was in The Bear hotel in Cowbridge that Iolo Morganwg performed his poetry and spoke passionately about politics. So there’s no better place to launch the novel!’ added Gareth.
The launch will be led by Carys Whelen who will be interviewing the author and there will be readings from actors Eiry Palfrey (Gwaith/Cartref, Dinas) as ‘Peggy’ and Danny Grehan ( Harri Tudur, Casualty) as Iolo Morganwg.
Gareth Thomas was born to parents from Cwm Rhondda and studied drama in the Barry and London. He worked in England as an actor, teacher and director before learning Welsh aged fifty. His first novel, A Welsh Dawn , was published in 2014. He currently lives in Cowbridge.
Myfi, Iolo by Gareth Thomas (£9.99, Y Lolfa) is available now.
