Recording sessions at Forbes St Studios over the coming months, and previously at Megaphon Studios, Forbes St, and the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Mara! and Martenitsa will complete the bed tracks for their exciting next CD.
This will be a CD devoted to showcasing a wealth of previously unrecorded works composed and commissioned especially for Martenitsa Choir and the Mara! band.
Composers include Llew and Mara Kiek, Paul Cutlan, Laura Bishop and Sandy Evans in addition to Bulgaria's premier choral composer, the late Ivan Spasov. Librettists include Stephan Kozuharov, Marcia Malinova-Anthony, Silvia Entcheva and Mara Kiek.
Engineers Steve Morley, Chris Doherty and associate producer Guy Dickerson are also contributing their expertise.
Kim Sanders Book Launch
The much awaited launch of the magnificent new book containing scores, arrangements, biography and photos of the great World Music innovator Kim Sanders will be at Camelot Lounge on Sunday October 27. The book was put together by Kim's long-time partner Linda Dawson. Mara Kiek worked with her to produce scores of a wide variety of Kim's tunes and arrangements. The Camelot concert features many of the musicians that worked with Kim over his lifetime.
For more info on the concert
World Music Ensemble at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music
Llew Kiek is running this course again in term 1 2020. Enquiries are now open.
For more info on the course
Crossroads: work continues on new album
Mara and Llew, with Padrig Sicard from Quimper and Yann Cariou from Concarneau, continue to work on a new project for their group Crossroads.
For more news
Tra Parole E Silenzio Mara! and Martenitsa's latest CD
Tra Parole e Silenzio is a celebration of life's most precious and enduring treasures - love, home, family and friends, so exquisitely expressed in the poignantly tender poems of Eduardo Di Giovanni and stunningly interpreted by Mara! Band composers and performers Paul Cutlan, Andrew Robson, Steve Elphick, Llew Kiek, Mara Kiek and Sandy Evans, in collaboration with Silvia Entcheva, Naomi Vaughan and the magnificent Martenitsa choir.
More about Tra Parole e Silenzio.
CD available from our online store.
from Froots (UK) Dec 2012
"The Sydney Morning Herald once referred to Mara! as "the Dom Perignon of (Australia's) World Music Bands", it was perhaps a touch premature, but this collaboration between the group and their Bulgarian-style choir certainly meets that appellation...an unqualified success with its feeling of fresh adventure, sumptuous singing and depth of musical experience."
Read Tra Parole CD review in "The Australian" of April 14, 2012