Welsh musicians produce international work for Celtic Connections
Welsh folk musicians Jordan Williams and Gwilym Bowen Rhys will be performing at the Celtic Connections music festival in Glasgow on 21 January, together with seven musicians from Argentina, Spain, Scotland and Uruguay.
The international group of musicians worked together for five days last year, during a Nexo residency in Buenos Aires, where they developed a joint performance. Each year Nexo brings together Celtic musicians to produce a brand new piece of music especially for Celtic Connections.
A former student of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Jordan plays double bass with Welsh folk band Elfen and Gwilym has contributed as a guitarist to various Welsh language folk music projects.
NeXo is part of a British Council project called Celtic Corridor, which connects musicians and the music industry in Scotland, Wales and South America. The Welsh musicians were invited to take part in the residency and financed by British Council Wales and Wales Arts International.
Celtic Connections is the largest roots music festival in Europe and the UK's most established celebration of world, traditional and folk music.
Jenny Scott, director of British Council Wales, said: “The Welsh music scene has a great deal of talent to share with the world and we’re pleased to give two young Welsh musicians the chance to work internationally and gain further exposure for their work.”
Jordan Williams (Vocals and Flute)
As a multi-instrumentalist, Jordan studied at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. He is passionate about traditional music and finding ways of bringing it into the public domain. Jordan plays the double bass with Welsh folk band Elfen, which recently took part in the Festival Interceltique de Lorient.
Gwilym Bowen Rhys (Vocals, Guitar and Mandoline)
A native of North Wales, Gwilym has contributed his talents as a guitarist to various Welsh language folk music projects which seek to recover Wales’s cultural heritage. Next year he aims to record his first solo album.
Listen to Gwilym on YouTube https://youtu.be/g4BE556LM7o
Celtic Connections
Celtic Connections is the largest roots music festival in Europe and the UK's most established celebration of world, traditional and folk music. Taking place in Glasgow in January each year the festival features some of the most prominent names in world music, with attendances reaching 110,000 and gross ticket sales of £1.15m.
British Council works with the Festival to raise the international profile, ambition and reach of the festival, and to strengthen international industry connections.
NeXo
NeXo is delivered in partnership with British Council, Wales Arts International, Xunta de Galicia and Axencia Galega das Industries Culturais, produced by JAU and supported by Creative Scotland and Fundación SGAE. The project aims to increase dialogue, cultural understanding, collaboration and connections between Galician, Latin American and British artists, which will ultimately result in further collaborations and develop new partnership models for showcasing music.
Nexo/Celtic Connections on YouTube https://youtu.be/L5yIKY0LPkA
About the British Council
The British Council is the UK’s international organisation for educational opportunities and cultural relations. We create international opportunities for the people of the UK and other countries and build trust between them worldwide.
We work in more than 100 countries and our 8,000 staff – including 2000 teachers – work with thousands of professionals and policy makers and millions of young people every year by teaching English, sharing the Arts and delivering education and society programmes.
We are a UK charity governed by Royal Charter. A core publically-funded grant-in-aid provides less than 20 per cent of our turnover which last year was £864m. The rest of our revenues are earned from services which customers around the world pay for, through education and development contracts and from partnerships with public and private organisations. All our work is in pursuit of our charitable purpose and supports prosperity and security for the UK and globally.
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