Lions of Africa – WOMAD

I’m just home from an amazing 5 days at WOMAD Festival UK held at Charlton Park annually. The line up of world class musicians was fantastic as ever with the final headliner being Robert Plant performing with the superb Juldeh Camara on riti (African violin) and Justin Adams on electric guitar. He’s still an amazing performer with all the enthusiasm of a young star!

We also saw the peerless Hugh Masakela and wonderful acts from all round the world.

I was lucky to be asked to play a set on the Lizard Stage (a small cafe stage in the fringe of the festival) and it was really a lovely atmosphere – I played a 45 min set to a small but appreciative audience and an old friend of mine sang lovely backing vocals as my keyboard player wasn’t available.

We were at WOMAD working with the All Singing All Dancing workshops with the incredible Lions of Africa, an act formed of several of our good friends from Senegal and Gambia – the pictures are fantastic on my Facebook page.

More pictures here! Lions of Africa

Middle Eastern Weekend and Other News!

What a busy and hectic time it’s been – but brilliant.

The Middle Eastern Weekend was wonderful – I was part of a melody group playing flute and we learned two gorgeous pieces of music as well as having my first ever go at belly dancing which was great fun.

The evening entertainment was fantastic with visiting musicians as well as lovely music from Maren and Chas the event organisers.

Meanwhile, Peter is now back from his extraordinary trip to meet relatives in Russia – quite life changing for him.

Next week we’re off to WOMAD festival and I’m thrilled to have been asked to play a set on one of the side stages called The Lunched Out Lizard Stage.

I’m on track 9 of the new CD and now working on track order and thinking about design for the album cover. Onwards and upwards!

Summer – washed out but still having fun

This summer in the UK is just rain, rain and more rain. It’s rained here almost every day since April.

Despite that, I’ve managed to attend the usual drumming and festival events and this weekend I’m off to a middle-eastern festival in Somerset till Monday to learn Arabic scales on my flute.

I’m really making progress on the second album and have now got 8 tracks virtually finished – you can here versions on my music page at http://iacmusic.com/chandramoon

We’ve had amazing family excitement with Peter finding long lost relatives in Russia and he is at this moment over there being filmed for a Russian TV programme which reunites families. His dad (who died many years ago) and uncle were separated in the war and only now has news re-emerged about the uncle’s whereabouts. How incredible to suddenly discover your family after all these years.

I’m still posting photos on Facebook regularly more than here but will try and put some up here soon.