Freeland Barbour - Winter's Journey

(January 2005) 22 tracks: Winter morning * Daybreak / A candle end * Steel on ice * All Hallows / The hawthorn and the oak / First snows * Lagavulin * Lagarfljot / Towards a distant shore * The guiding light * Morning lullaby * The golden bough * Cave of ice * Nordland * High above the snowline * Cold east winds * Evening lullaby * Briksdalsbreen / The deep caverns * The moon’s rim * On Friendship’s shore * Shadow of the pines * Kellingir * In the lamplight * Candlemas * Edge of day.

Freeland Barbour comes from Glen Fincastle near Pitlochry in Highland Perthshire, and has been a very well known figure in the Scottish music scene for many years. He joined folk group Silly Wizard in 1975, before moving on to form the influential Wallochmor Ceilidh Band, and more recently The Occasionals.

Snow, ice and transient beauty are evoked in these piano pieces by Freeland, in a series of gentle atmospheric melodies - sound pictures of places and times.

The album is a musical journey through a Northlands winter, with Freeland playing his own compositions on the wonderful Bosendorfer 275 Concert Grand Piano which is housed at Castlesound, the studio where he recorded the album.