Mara and Llew worked with Padrig Sicard and Yann Cariou in Quimper and Concarneau in January 2017 on a new project for their group CrossRoads. Their plans to complete the recording in late 2020 were stymied by the pandemic and Mara & Llew's trip to Brittany postponed. In the intervening years, projects based in Australia took precedence, not least being the development and launching of the Mara! Big Band, and sadly the CrossRoads album had to be placed on the backburner.
However, Mara and Llew are now making plans to travel to Brittany in early 2024 to complete the recording.
The music continues on the path trodden by their first album 'De Partir ... C'est Mon Plaisir!' featuring great Breton and Scottish dance tunes, odd-time eastern European dances and some traditional and original songs.
Yann and Padrig play the "unsociable" great highland bagpipes and bombarde, plus the "more sociable" lowland pipes, fiddle and flutes. Llew contributes guitar/bouzouki/baglama, and Mara sings and plays percussion including tapan.
Their last trip was in the winter of 2017 and it pretty cold outside, as you can tell from the photo, but none of them noticed until they emerged from the studio each evening! They had 2 weeks of very intensive project development and recording and, for Mara & Llew, it was a precious time being back in the company of these two fabulous Breton musicians.
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