Home
'People like me' released on Navigator Records
(link to music home page)
“Alyth loves singing, and lets you know that with out telling you. You can hear it in her voice. She may be from lewis, sings (but not all exclusively) in Gaelic, and often performs with harp and fiddle - but she’s not a folkie. Her musical education and influences are too wide to sit in that, or any other, ghetto, minimalists like Reich, the sweeping eclecticism of Adams, sophisticated rock, modal jazz and role models like June Tabor or Marta Sebestyen have taken her down a path where she can sing unaccompanied in a Hebridean hall one day and with a metropolitan fusion samba band the next. She is at home on stage and brings to her music - whether with the close harmony vocalists in Shine or full jazz/rock rhythm section in Sunhoney - a still centre"
(Norman Chalmers - the List - August 2003)
NEWS
UPDATED JANUARY 2010 "HAPPY NEW YEAR!"
EVENTS
It's January and to kick start the year Celtic Connections opens in Glasgow. Alyth will be performing two gigs there. She has her own gig with her big band at the ABC, Sauchiehall St. on January 28th during the Showcase Scotland weekend and will be performing with The Chieftains and Ry Cooder in the Main Auditorium, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall on January 26th. She is also workshoping a new play based on the life of Belle Stewart of the Traveler family The Stewarts of Blair - The Queen Among the Heather.
Spiral Awards- Best Female Singer
Alyth has been nominated for the Best Female Singer in the Spiral Earth Awards. If you would like to vote please log on to SPIRAL AWARDS 2010
Thank you.
2009 ROUND UP
Alyth finished off the year performing Christmas gigs with Anuna in St Ann's Church in Dublin. She is working on a project with Michael McGlynn - Anuna's Artisitc Director - where they will explore the great voal traditions of their two cultures. She also toured Ireland with The Chieftains on their Irish November tour in addition to an Irish tour with her won band beforereturning to Scotland for her own gigs there and a well overdue trip home to Lewis.
She toured in Italy with Liam O'Flynn and also Belgium where she was performing in the glorious Sonic Cathedral in Mons with Musiques Nouvelles the Orchestra of the St Kilda Opera. A highlight of the year was performing the Opera at the Edinburgh International Festival. The Opera was a great success for reviews St Kilda Reviews and there is interest from other countires such as America, Australia and Estonia so we'll keep you posted. For more information on the Opera please click here and to read an interview with Alyth about it please see St Kilda Interview.
She also had a great week teaching with the Global Music Foundation in Italy and had fantastic gigs performing there with Jazz musicians Ed Simons (Venezuela), Gilad Atzmon (Israel), Duncan Hopkins(Canada) and Stephen Keogh (Ireland). It was a very exciting week and she hopes to work with them again.
PROJECTS
Alyth has taken part in a project with a host of other artists from a multitude of media called the 7sails project ; it is a creative Chinese whisper between artists of different disciplines at northern latitudes. check where it's afloat....http://www.studiolog.heriot-toun.co.uk/7sails_5_intro.php
and has recorded a piece for a multi media exhibition by photographer and musician Iain Shaw called 'Jesus has left the building' which is currently on display in An Lanntair, Kenneth St, Stornoway, Isle of Lewis.
ALBUM NEWS
Her album 'People like me' got a 5 star Review in Rock n Reel and you can read it at the bottom of this page. Recently she recorded an interview with Ian McMillan for BBC Radio 3's The Verb and supported Moving Hearts at the Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival in Belfast. She has also been touring America with The Chieftains reviews of this tour feature in LIVE GIGS There are further reviews of Alyth's new album 'People like me' ALBUM REVIEWS and for a taste of life on the road you can read Alyth's tour diary in AMERICA 09.
PLUS - see the video of the opening track 'Nuair bha mi og' from 'People like me' recorded for Horo Gheallaidh
'People like me' released on Navigator Records
Alyth's new solo album 'People like me' was released on Navigator Records www.navigatorrecords.co.uk . It includes traditional and contemporary songs in both English and Gaelic. Songwriters such as Boo Hewerdine, Justin Currie, Brendan Graham and Jim Malcolm feature along with top class musicians such as Jonny Hardie (The Old Blind Dogs), Brian Mcalpine (Session A9), Noel Eccles ( Moving Hearts), Aidan O'Rourke (Lau), Ewen Vernal (Capercaillie), Fraser Fifield (The Fraser Fifield Band), Donal Hay (Mystery Juice) and Gerald Peregrine.
Alyth ***** ‘People like me’ (Navigator Records)
It was by mere accident that. Late one night I tuned into BBC Radio nan Gaidheal and caught the latter half of an exhilarating arrangement of the traditional ‘Chaidil mi raoir air an airigh’ in the assured soprano of an artist that hitherto had meant nothing to me. So vastly attractive was it that I had to procure the associated album.
Because I spun ‘Chaidil mi raoir air an airigh’ over and over again before approaching the other dozen items, it took a while for the likes of the a cappella ‘Mo ghaol oigfhear’, ‘The Queen and the Soldier’ , A Mhairead Og’ – hinged on a riff reminiscent of ‘Shakin all over’ - and the majestic title track to attain comparable familiarity. Nevertheless, I was able to appreciate immediately that there’s been lively imagination at work among Alyth McCormack’s accompanists - as exemplified by percussionist Noel Eccles’s incorporation of daraburka, marimba, meditation balls and further exotica into the proceedings.
Finally, while I still can’t let a waking hour go by without a shot of ‘Chaidil mi raoir air an airigh’, it’s but one aspect of a fabulous, modern folk-music recording and one that could appeal to a mainstream pop audience.
Alan Clayson
