wee dug by Joe Davie

 

Georgiana McCrae self-portrait

Songs of Home and Distant Isles

available on bandcamp
listen on Spotify and Apple Music
download at iTunes
download digital booklet (hi-resolution 50MB, smaller 14MB)

 
In March 2019 we recorded a set of videos with soprano Lorna Anderson in Dalkeith Palace, to accompany the exhibition Songs of Home at the Museum of Sydney (August-November 2019), curated by Matthew Stephens, and produced by Jeanice Brooks. Our repertoire was drawn from music played in the homes of the Gordon and Buccleuch families, and many of these pieces were transported to Australia in the manuscript music books of the artist Georgiana McCrae, who grew up at Gordon Castle and emigrated to Australia in 1840. Some of the tunes would have been played by Nathaniel Gow in the room where we recorded, and heard there by their dedicatees for the first time.

The videos are all available at the University of Southampton's Sound Heritage site, and you can also hear our recordings in the broader context of the exhibition's soundtrack.

cover image: Georgiana McCrae self-portrait aged 20, 1824 (State Library of Victoria)