25 November 2009

More of Rico's favorite music


That would be Alan Stivell, a Breton musician who rocks out with archaic instruments and ancient tunes. From Wikipedia:
Alan Stivell (born Alan Cochevelou 6 January 1944) is a French and Breton musician and singer, recording artist, and master of the Celtic harp who, from the early 1970s, revived global interest in the Celtic (specifically Breton) harp and Celtic music.
Alan was born in the Auvergnat town of Riom. His father Georges (Jord in Breton) Cochevelou was a civil servant in the French Ministry of Finance, who achieved his dream of recreating a Celtic or Breton harp in the small town of Gourin, Brittany. In 1953, at the age of nine, Alan began playing the instrument under the tutelage of his father and Denise Megevand, a concert harpist. Alan also learned Celtic mythology, art, and history as well as the Breton language, traditional Breton dance, and the Scottish bagpipe and the bombarde, a traditional Breton instrument from the oboe family. Alan began playing concerts at eleven years old and studying traditional Breton, English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh folk music, also learning the drum, Irish flute, and tin whistle. He competed in and won several Breton traditional music competitions in the Bleimor Pipe band. Alan spent his childhood in Paris, with its cosmopolitan influences from France, Algeria, Morocco, and elsewhere, but he fell in love with Breton music and Celtic culture in general, and often went back in his teens to Brittany.
Alan's first recording came in 1960 (Musique gaelique), a single that was followed by the LP Telenn Geltiek in 1964. He already recorded solo harp and harp backing singers in 1959 with Breiz ma bro ('Brittany my country') and a Mouez Breiz ('Voice of Brittany') with the female singer Andrea Ar Gouilh. His stage name, Stivell, means "fountain" or "spring" in Breton. This name refers both to the Breton renewal and to his name "Cochevelou", an evolution of kozh stivelloù, the old fountains.
With a new bardic harp with bronze strings, Stivell began experimenting with modernized styles of music known as celtic rock. In 1966, Alan Stivell began to perform and record as a singer. The following year, he was signed by Philips; it was the birth of the New Breton and Celtic music movement. In 1968, after two years of touring, Alan joined the Moody Blues to perform in London's Queen Elizabeth Hall.
Rico says that leads to another of his favorite bands:

No comments:

 

Casino Deposit Bonus