Musicians' and Singers' Biographies
Carole Clarke
growing up near Stirling, studying at RSAMD Glasgow and Edinburgh University, Carole Clarke is an Edinburgh-based singer who likes to sing anything from Bach to Burns and Elgar to Ellington! Much of her work is as mezzo-soprano soloist with choirs and ensembles in and around Central Scotland. Each May Carole is the guest singer with the Edinburgh Light Orchestra. At this year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe, she is also singing in a performance of Handel's 'The Triumph of Time and Truth' and Bach's 'Mass in B Minor', with Ludus Baroque at the Canongate Kirk.
Carole also works as a music therapist with people who have dementia, and as a tutor at the National Youth Choir of Scotland.
Photo: Wallace Artworks
Irene Railley
Edinburgh-based, leader of 'Just Voices' an a capella group, including Kath Latham and Alison Vasey. She is also choir leader of 'Song works', a community choir, and a member of 'Sainted Aunts', an all-woman trio who sing Georgian polyphany. Recently, she has travelled to Georgia and Bulgaria collecting songs.
From left to right: Irene Railley, Alison Vasey and Kath Latham.
Photo by Stephanie Green
John Sampson
John A Sampson is an Edinburgh-based professional musician, composer and actor. A well known and loved performer on the UK music scene for forty years. Work includes theatres, orchestras, bands and too many Tours! His classical and jazz performance skills are highly regarded.
He has performed many times with poets, in particular, Stewart Conn and for ten years, with Carol Ann Duffy, the poet laureate. He is famed for his facility on an extraordinary number of wind instruments, including the flute, piccolo, recorder, posthorn and crumhorn.
Patsy Seddon
Patsy Seddon has been at the forefront of the Scottish Harp (Clàrsach) revival for the last forty years. She has played in many groups; the harp and singing duo Sileas, the all women 5 piece The Poozies and larger ensembles like Clan Alba with Dick Gaughan et al.
After graduating from Edinburgh University with an honours degree in Celtic Studies in 1985 she
embarked on a musical career that has resulted in many concert, radio and TV appearances and in
recording over 12 CDs with various line ups.
Patsy sings in Gaelic and English and teaches Scottish Harp and Kodály musicianship for NYCoS.
Her latest project is the singing trio Madge Wildfire with Gerda Stevenson and Kathy Stewart.
singer and poet from Fair Isle and the music and language traditions of the Northern Isles. She writes music and song, teaches music and performs nationally and internationally.
New work: ‘A Time To Keep - and other songs’ is an album inspired by the stories in George MacKay Brown’s ‘A Time to Keep’ performed in Orkney, Fair Isle, Shetland, Edinburgh and Iceland in March 2012 with Inge Thomson, Ástvaldur Traustasson,
Brian Cromarty and Ewen Thomson, and Icelandic translations by Ađalsteinn Ásberg Sigurđsson.
Recordings/publishing includes Ivver Entrancin Wis’; see Video by Liz Musser & Alice Best for WHO WON THE HEART (poem by Paul Ritch) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cunX645frBY
Under the Evening Sky’; ‘White Below’; ‘here’ & ‘Empty Ocean’ for Radio 3. Recent collaborations include a SCFWAG commission with artist Tommy Hyndman on Shetland’s crofting landscape; arranging with the RSNO.