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Grasnapolsky Festival Groningen
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Catherine Graindorge is a violinist, violist, composer and actress based in Brussels. Over the years, she has built her craft by mixing disciplines, creating theatre shows as a writer and actor, composing music for her own and others’ shows and playing in various musical formations. In September 2023 she was awarded the Octave de la Musique in the “Solo Artist of the Year” category.
Her 3rd album Songs for the Dead has been released on 26 April 2024 on Tak:Til (Glitterbeat Records). This special project takes as starting point Allen Ginsberg’s poem A Dream Record, in which he recounts a dream encounter with his late friend Joan Burroughs, and the myth of Orpheus who wanted to bring Eurydice back to the living. Catherine weaves an intense musical tale, caught between light and shadow, anguish and hope, lyricism and introspection.
To accompany her sensitive, textured strings, Catherine invites the deep, incarnate voice of Simon Huw Jones (And Also The Trees), the telluric bass of Cyrille de Haes and the delicate piano of Simon Ho.
In a distant echo to the cinematographic flights of Max Richter or the flayed harmonies of Warren Ellis, somewhere between ambient, rock and neo-classical, the music on this new opus continues its singular, bewitching trajectory.
The album already received great reviews, like:
“**** Somewhere between classical music, soundtracks and rock, there is a fascinating universe in which Catherine Graindorge is more than ever in her element.” – La Libre (BE)
“She plays with shadow and light, and balances between dream and reality […]. Although it’s all intense, intimate and subdued, it still has a grand effect. In terms of references you have to think of continuously changing hybrids of Soap & Skin, Hildur Gudnadottir, Amber Asylum, Kali Malone, Nick Cave, Hilmar Orn Hilmarsson and Anna Von Hausswolff. What a stunningly beautiful album she delivers here!” – subjectivisten.nl (NL)
“These 8 new compositions reveal a dreamlike, romantic universe and paradoxically, both dark and bursting with light. An LP of touching beauty” – Musiczine (BE)
“All these different layers intertwine beautifully, creating a palette of sounds that are as atmospheric and emotional as they are literally filled with poetry. For me, this is one of the most interesting premieres of recent months, and Songs For The Dead is already one of the albums I will definitely come back to again and again” – Anxious magazine (PL)
