WELLADAY: HISTORY
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Welladay band was founded in March 1998 in St.-Petersburg, Russia. The name of the ensemble "Welladay" is originallly from the Old English
and Old Scandinavian languages; as soon as in the modern languages this word
does not exist, it's difficult to explain what does it mean. In August 1998 in Norway was recorded first Welladay's album "Lights of love" released on CD and cassette. You can listen part of it NOW , for example. In any case, it's possible to get it through the Info Portal Veresk.ru (cassette), Veresk.ru (CD) Welladay performs Irish, Scottish, Spanish, English and Breton music, also Medieval and Renaissance music. About the origin and history of each tune from our CD "Lights of Love" you can read here or in the cover to our CD or cassette. First it was a quartette: Katya Lozhkomoeva, Sukharev Viatcheslav, Kristian Nordeide and Lisov Igor. Katya Lozhkomoeva in her childhood studied violin in the classical musical school. After a long break in playing, due to certain circumstances she had met her future colleague and played in the first version of well-known in St.-Petersburg "Old Horned Sheep" band during autumn 1995 - summer 1997. That was the first St.-Petersburg band performing traditional Irish music. Starting point for"Old Horned Sheep" was Katya's trip in Czech Republic in July 1995 together with Alik Drobinski (the last one in the previous year studied celtic music also in Slovenia). There she met and commenced to experience playing of celtic music from the artists of different European countries where such music was already very popular. The band played on the regular basis in several pubs of the city such as "Shamrock Irish Pub","Tschaika" etc. In "Shamrock Irish Pub", specifically, this ensemble played on private party in honour of Irish Minister of Agriculture. Also in the regular basis "Old Horned Sheep" played on the thematic Irish parties in the Jan's club called "Okoshki"("Windows"), later "Bely Krolik" ("White Rabbit") with dances and special pancakes. The band made demo recording in the studio of the "Europa Plus" radiostation for the CD from the series "Ethnical music" in the spring 1997 (the project was not released). Simultaneoulsy with the "Old Horned Sheep" project Katya took part in the german tour and several russian concerts of the "Klub Kavaljera Gluka" band (by Eugeny Pusser). This vanguard band impressioned her much. Starting from 1997 Katya is active travelling. Together with Sukharev Viatcheslav she was several times on the French Festival "Les Rencontres Internationales de Luthiers et Maitres Sonneurs", St.-Chartier, France. Sukharev Viatcheslav was under impression of St.-Petersburg early music revival. He played in the Ensemble "Kuranta" ("Courante") conducted by Kira Isaevna Alterman and studied with Alexandr Yurievitch Kiskachi and Oleg Alekseevitch Kuzmin (died spring 2000). After he met "Zelenye Rukava" ("Greensleeves") in Kiev (Ukraine), he pushed them to go to St.-Petersburg. His active participating in this project have not took place due to the certain circumstances but still the events of those time are criterion of truth for him. After he helped in founding of "Ave Rosa" Early Music Ensemble. At the same time in the Institute of Culture he began to work on the "Welladay" project. Slava frequently travelled and took part in music festivals of various East Europian countries. On this basis he became interested in the mutual influences of Early and Folk Music. In this period he played in Galician Early Music Ensemble "Baco de Lugo" conducted by Horhe Ribeiro, then in norwegian "Askerova Quartet" together with Martin Criuse, Christopher Lund and Reider Florentz;episodical he made recording with different European bands of all styles: from dark-metal until unduisguised pop. Starting from 1995 Slava himself enthusiastically propagandize celtic music in St.-Petersburg basing on his impressions that he's got in Ireland, Scotland, Bretagne and Galicia. For example, he brought a very well known to all St.-Petersburg musicians so-called "black tin whistle book" (as well as the tin whistle itself) and "1000 tunes" by Ph. O'Neil; on the basis of these two books was made the good half of "Old Horned Sheep"'s album "To Drive the Cold Winter Away"(AnTrop Studio, 1997). A lot of tunes adopted by him from musicians of different cultural traditions sucessfully assimilated in St.-Petersburg. In 1996 Slava brought to Russia his first bagpipe, that was Galician "Gaita". Her sounds caused sincere enthusiasm of public on the first celtic celebrations. Lisov Igor combined his participation in "Welladay" with another project Zelenye Rukava (Greensleeves). In certain moment he decided to change this situation and started to work on composing his own songs. Kristian Nordeide started his musical career as a guitarist in a "Dark Metal" band. Later he moved on to opera and he was also a choir singer for some years. Today he is working as a theatre musician, playing lutes, flutes and bagpipes with Bergen Byspill. Kristian has developed concepts for "medieval banquets" for groups of up to 60 people, mixing theatre with music, dance, food and heavy drinking, in a historical building at Bryggen in Bergen. He also focus on the building and reconstruction of folk instruments, such as, Bagpipes, Hurdy Gurdy and Harps. For example, he has developed an original "medieval" Harp design. One of these harps was brought to St.Petersburg by Slava in 1999. Here Alexey Skosarev made some copies from it, and today these harps are widely used by St. Petersburg folk-bands. Apart from participating in Welladay, he made his own solo recording: "Corona Borealis: Cantus Paganus" on the Dutch lable "Well of Urd" where Welladay musicians are also involved. (release due: 22nd January 2001) Most of the material on the "Corona Borealis" CD is performed on instruments he has made himself. "Corona Borealis" REVIEW . Kristian appears in Bergen Byspill, Welladay, Corona Borealis, a lute duo with his uncle, Lars Tirressen (a notable luthier), and in an as yet unnamed Scottish Highland Pipe Band. Due to the certain circumstances, Welladay invites to play various musicians: Bogdanova Darja (vocal); Bogdanova Darja and Mitrophanov Vadim during a long time played together in the "Ave Rosa" Early Music Ensemble conducted by Anna Mitrophanova. Here they mastered musical stylistics of various ages (starting from Masho to Telemann). At the same time Bogdanova Darja acquainted herself with Irish music participating in "Nordfolks" band (1999) in "Shamrock Irish Pub" as a whistle player. Mikhailova Zinaida participated in St.-Petersburg early music revival playing in several groups (ex. in the Institue of Culture). She started to be interested in playing Irish music, learned tunes from "Mighty! Tunes" and "pick" them up from tape recordings. Lojkomoeva Ekaterina showed her in 1999 "50 Fiddle Solos" by Aly Bain together with cincerned to it tape. This book made a big impression on Zina and for some time her musical interests were focused on Shetland Music in the whole and Aly Bain style especially. As a result, by hitch-hiking and "yacht-hitch-hiking" Zina went to these cherished islands. There she found the band called "Froody Toong" and played with them in Leirwick, Bergen and Stavanger (Norway). In Norway she met Niels and Mitrofanov Vadim, the last one she already knew in St.-Petersburg. During her norwigean trip she also practised music with Germans from Hannover, they played celtic music brilliant. Zina's musical activity was reflected in western mass-media. Paschschenko Ivan studied in musical school two specialization consecutively - piano and bassoon. When he was 5 y.o., his parents allowed him to listen recording of Kantata "Alexandr Nevsky" by Sergei Prokophjev not more then once per day. When he was 14 he assembled his first rock-band, the year before he started to collect his famous record library (today it counts more then 1000 CD, a lot of disks, magnetic tapes, informational editions). In his musical career Ivan mastered the following instruments: for several years he was solo-guitar player, after military service he seriously worked on drums and sang. The professional drum players that studied in jazz school said to him: "We'd like to have your head together with our technology". Ivan also composes music and texts, makes arrangements; he wrote album in style "art-rock" (stylisticly the closest bands are "Gentle Giant", "Genesis", "Asia", solo albums of Phil Collins and Peter Gabriel). The bands conducted by him became laureates of various competitions. Schekhardin Dmitri breaked off his classical musical education on the 1st course of Kurgan Musical College. Dmitri was taking part in several St.-Petersburg musical projects from Cossacks folk band to the Middle Ages Ensemble "Laterna Magica". Now he is a member of the Dobranotch band playing East-European music as well as Russian traditional songs. Sergeev Pyotr in the previous years was known as confirmed Celtic Music admirer in the whole, who copied out recordings from CD format to tape format (such possibility was quite a rare and valuable one as the recordings of Western folk musicians were only in CD format) and fan of "Old Horned Sheep" and "Zelenye Rukava" ("Greensleeves") of those times. Some years ago he learned how to play bodhran as soon as the number of musicians in St.-Petersburg became not sufficient. Today you can hardly find any local celtic concerts without his participation... Lisov Oleg - the brother of Lisov Igor is famous mainly due to "Zelenye Rukava" ("Greensleeves")band. Oleg unlike Petia who learned how to play bodhran himself, studied the full percussion course in the Putivl Musical School (Ukraine). Oleg is one of the best percussionist of Russia and... Turkey possibly (he is living now there) in the range of Medieval and Renaissance music. Today he is working on his own "Dragon and Snake" project, last year his first album was released in Russia. It connects Irish music with Rock-n-roll. Jakovlev Oleg appeared on the musical horizon not a long time ago and besides playing with Welladay he recommended himself also with "Reelroad" band. Dag Sindre Vagle previously played electric guitar in style "speed-metall" and sang, then after his trip to Ireland he became enthusiastic about Celtic Music and learned how to play flute, tin-whistle, low-whistle, bousouki. It was Dag who in 1993 explained to Slava advantages of exploring special guitar pattern "open tuning" (specifically DADGAD) in folk music. Later various modal tunings were used for Welladay by Lisov Igor and Vadim Mitrophanov and due to this they have spread in Moscow, Petrozavodsk, Ryazan, Nizny Novgorod and Kishinev. Dag played in several folk bands (the most known are "Black Velvet Band" and "Stavanger Harbour Band"). Today he is a member of the famous Norwigean band "The Tramps" and he is writing songs for his own project. Martin Cruise - is an inevitable person of English folk music revival as a whole and especially Liverpool folk music revival. Martin met Slava in 1994, since that time they travelled a lot together and were on the Tall Ship Race "Katty Sark" as musicians, took big concert activity over the whole Scandinavia.Martin plays on almost all musical instruments that are used in Celtic music but most brilliantly he plays Irish transverse flute; he possesses by really inexhaustible, pure English sense of humour. The crown phrase is "Slava, don't be so hard to me, I'm a soft english gentlemen". Kailash is a mysterious personality. He was showing himself only at those moments which were really necessary for the History. Being an active travelling man, he suddenly appeared in the right time and city and played an important part in the recording of Welladay's first album "Lights of Love".... He met Slava on norwigean Ting-meeting'93, after they played for a while on the West Coast. Clive Fox - is the English biologist, he met Katya the day before his participation in recording of "Lights of Love".Clive is an authentic fiddler playing in inimitable "norwich local style". Niels Arveschoug - is a master of playing of all musical styles on each accordeon type, especially on concertina; the priority of his interests is an English music. Due to Niels we also became enthusiastic in English folk music. Niels is the father of five (!) children "... and true english gentlemen". Reidar Florentz - is the Norwigean, but his ancestors were from Italy, so, possibly due to this fact he has staggering vocal qualities. In 1996 Reider managed to sing in acoustic together with Slava's bagpipe (which is really one of the loudest in the world :) ) without sacrificing his timbre and beauties of the voice. He is seven foot good lad, kindly soul and likes to have a drop of aclcohol in friendly atmosphere. From 2 month old til 15 years old he was living in Scottish Highland where he became filled with celtic culture and has got inimitable highland accent. In difficult life situations he can just show his big fist (like mug of beer) in the face of the opponent crying "Would you like to get a Glasgow sandwich?" The volume of his memory is hard to believe - several thousands of songs! Nobody managed yet to find a song in English language that he could not sing accompanying himself on guitar. Zubzov Stas played in the first complement of the band "Dobranotch" at their celtic music period. The band was based in Nantes, France. Then Stas moved back to Russia where he organised numerous bands "for one session". Now his project is called Triskell containing Avtushkova Snejana and Katchalov Mikhail. At the same time "Triskell" as an independent unit participates in the concerts of "Welladay". created by: Katya Lozhkomoeva, 2000-2015. |