|  |
| It is a completely different thing to hear and see Sian perform live. She is an angel. We Celts are noted for our range of songs and tunes which can take you from joy to melancholy in a painfully short time. The Welsh are no exception to this rule and Sian’s Wonderful voice and expressive face help to make each song a treasure to hear. Her playing is brilliant yet effortless and her singing is pure even with the songs of love and betrayal.
She happily explains the songs too before singing them. This is so those of us with only about 2 words of Welsh, both involving ordering alcohol, can understand them. The songs and stories run like an amazing folk soap opera. There are men sending Blackbirds to their uninterested girlfriends and brothers secretly marrying the other brother’s fiance. Confused? You won’t be if you buy Sian’s new album Pur which features many of the songs and tunes she sang today.
If you get the chance to see Sian live though, take it. She took us all through a beautiful set in the relative hush of the small Theater and I was genuinely moved, a small tear showing the big softie in me yearning for a night in Mam’s kitchen back in the hills.
Tomorrow we will join Sian as she takes a workshop again at the Celtic weekend and we will bring you more reviews of the other acts from this small but ever growing festival.
|
John Cutliffe
Reviewing Sian's performance Atlanta Celtic Festival |
| |
Sian James is the Welsh melodic psyche, and once you understand that her potential becomes awesome. A Welsh Enya? - do me a favour! We're talking automatic empathy here, not any reinforced Celtic stereotypes. James, for my money, will one day sweep all before her.
|
| |
| Distaw- 'Quiet' in English - is another brick in the wall, and one which points her to the mainstream, ground she so easily captures with music like Ac Mae'r Ffordd yn hir, or Dy Buro Di. Cloth-eared English will consign this to some ethnic rack, but the sheer power and beauty of her voice unadorned on the simple folk song Yr Eneth Glaf or Enaid Ar Ffo, where she's tripled, is stunning.
This shot is far more organic, even open than her first, yet reaches far beyond parochiality into the uncharted. Her music grows in depth the more you listen, and if you're not in Snowdonia, then sweeping along the Llyn coastline, at least in spirit if not reality with this, then mate you don't know Wales, no matter how many times you've visited. But know Sian James and you're getting there.
Dwin' decall Cymraeg... tipyn bach.
|
Simon Jones
Reviewing Distaw in Folk Roots |
| |
| New Mexico Welsh thrilled by Welsh singer Siân James
New Mexicans were fortunate to enjoy thrills, weeping and laughing at a recent perfor-mance in Albuquerque by Siân James, singer and harpist. Not well known in this country, Siân is an icon in her native Wales. She was in Albuquerque under the auspices of the National Endowment for the Humanities to make recordings.
Singing publicly at the age of three, the artist's background includes a degree in voice and broad experience. For example, hers is the voice you hear in the film, The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill and Came Down a Mountain. She has also composed a soundtrack for a six part BBC series on birds.
Siân's voice is singularly sweet, well-suited to her specialty of acnient and modern Welsh folk love songs and Celtic laments. To highlight her versatility, however, she treated her audience to her own composition for voice and harp of a blues number, which brought down the house.
Singing almost exclusively in Welsh, she was delightful in the tsanslations and story telling she offered before each number. A rousing arrangement of "Counting the Goats" closed memorable concert. Watch for her CDs and TV and film credits In the future
|
Ruth Lewis
Y Drych - American Welsh newspaper January 2000 |
| |
| ...suitably rhapsodic music by Siân James, owner of the type of voice that critics describe as "achingly pure". |
John Peel
Describing the Birdman soundtrack in Radio Times |
| |
| Well, if it did for Enya, then it'll certainly do for Sian James. A commission from the BBC could be just the thing the doctor ordered to move from cult status to wider acceptance. One of Welsh music's higher profile performers therefore has a thorny problem: to make an album which will bear her stamp, aim for loftier things and satisfy the programmers. Perhaps fortunately for Miss James, the music of Wales is full of animalistic references and easily adapted,and where she needed to she's written her own or borrowed work to suit.
Chiefly instrumental there's enough of the James panache here to work the magic so regularly dished out on her Sain releases: imaginative settings and amiable, evocative symphonies headed by her trademark harp. And that voice makes strong men crumble as she gently coos Mil Harddach, a stunning acapella lullaby, her first forays into English vocals leaving a lingering stamp of gentle muscle or haunting echo as the album progresses. At the close you can't help but feel that she's turned a corner and now Sian James can't be as uncomplicated as she once was ever again. But perhaps that's no bad thing because there she still has a monster record to make and now that is one step nearer. Meantime Birdman is more than very good indeed.
|
Review of Birdman in Folk Roots |
| |
| The BBC is not known for cutting corners when it c,omes to soundtracks for its programmes, a tradition upheld with Birdman (BBC Music)
The mesmerising soundtrack to Birdman - a six part series starting in March which follows RSPB officer Iolo Williams as he works to protect endangered bird species in Wales - is composed and sung by Welsh artist Sian -James.
Schooled from a young age in the Celtic tradition, with Birdman she could do for Wales what Clannad have done for Ireland and Capercaillie for Scotland.
The exquisite Y Gwydd (The Loom) and Marwnad yr Ehedydd (The Lark's Elegy), and stunning acappella Mil Harddach (A Thousand Times More Beautiful), will have viewers running to music shops everywhere.
|
The Warwickshire Standard
Friday January 29, 1999 |
| |
| A long awaited album of Welsh traditional songs sung in Sian James' own inimitable fashion. Her voice a pure and strong instrument can carry itself no matter what the situation either accapella or fronting a full band. Here the evidence is divided over a series of arrangements some bigger than others. "Peth mawr ydy' cariad" has a big arrangment where Sian can use all her strength forcefully while "Deio Bach" uses strings thoughtfully. The more spartan tracks are equally effective as "Y gwydd" and "Cariad Cyntaf" both display. Continuing her evolution from her last album "Distaw" this collection of traditional material finds Sian James among the leading lights of her own generation. A work of extreme heart and a work of art.
|
John O'Regan - Broadcaster & Freelance journalist
Limerick, Ireland
reviewing Gweini Tymor |
Reviews
