Julie Murphy & Ceri Rhys Matthews

Welsh Folk Songs (UK)

Julie Murphy & Ceri Rhys Matthews are among the 'veterans' of Welsh folk music. Both originally studied art, they met at art college in 1979 and have lived in Pencader, a small Welsh-speaking village in Carmarthenshire, for over thirty years. The landscape consists of rolling hills, fast flowing rivers, streams and ancient mixed woodland. Many of the duo's songs and melodies reflect the history and cultural life of the area: farming is still important, there was once a thriving wool industry, the railway and, to the west, the sea. Some songs also tell of the many people who left the later impoverished area to work in the industrial centres.

Julie Murphy is known for remarkable, contemporary interpretations of Welsh folk songs and deeply personal, yet politically engaged art-folk songwriting. TIME OUT magazine has declared her "a singer to see and hear". Her remarkable voice, which is ethereally beautiful one moment and dark and mysterious the next, has led her to collaborations with John Cale and Robert Plant, among others. Flute virtuoso and instrument maker Ceri Rhys Matthews has been exploring the songs and dances of his native Wales for decades. He has recorded over 25 CDs, plays as a solo musician, with the band Fernhill, which he founded in 1995, and as a duo with Julie Murphy. Together they create music that is rooted in place and language, but their themes of love, loss, joy and struggle are universal.