Tune-Chain

Music is personal, social and a living link between our past and our future.

Tune-Chain is a series of short films illustrating the way traditional musicians learn and share music. Nine of our finest professional folk musicians, including some significant names in the Welsh music scene, contributed their stories, connections and tunes to the project.

Fiddlers Robert Evans and Gerard KilBride, piper Gafin Morgan, accordionists Beth Williams Jones and Stephen Rees, triple harp maestro Robin Huw Bowen, harpist and singer Gwenan Gibbard, flautist Ceri Rhys Matthews and fiddler Elsa Davies create a musical chain playing music they’ve learned and taught and talking about what traditional music means to them as musicians and as people.

Each movie is between four and ten minutes long and features one musician playing one or two tunes, leading to the next link in the chain. Created and co-produced by Gerard KilBride and Rhodri Smith, the beautifully filmed series visits the nine musicians in their homes, kitchens and workshops. Though filmed using low-tech audio visual kit – iphones, flip cams and small hand held camcorders – the videos are exquisite cameos exploring traditional musicians ‘in their native habitat’.

We know that if we can do this then so can anyone else with access to a musician, a camera and a few hours. We’ll be using these movies and new ones to illustrate our music, our songs, dances and tunes. We hope you enjoy them and will send us your own Tune-Chain to share!

You can see the videos here and on our YouTube channel.