Dick Gaughan an intimate evening with .....

Event information

Kula Productions is pleased to welcome Dick Gaughan to the Frazer Theatre in knaresborough. Dick Gaughan was brought up immersed in the musical traditions and culture of the Gaels, both Scots and Irish,
which naturally, therefore, provide the foundation for everything he does. Dick has been a professional musician and singer since January 1970 (2007 is his 60th year on the planet), hasbeen playing guitar since the age of seven and made his first solo album in 1971 (No More Forever). Working mainly in the areas now known as folk or Celtic music, he has recorded quite extensively since then in many countries and in various ombinations with other musicians. Has also worked extensively as a session musician in a wide variety of musical styles.
Dick Gaughan was an early member of the Boys of the Lough and is on their first album. He was with the now legendary Scottish folk-rock band, Five Hand Reel, making three albums with them in the mid-to-late 1970's. In the 1990's he founded and produced the
short-lived but quite extraordinary ensemble Clan Alba.
In short, Dick has been at the cutting edge of Scottish music for almost four decades. Guitarist, singer, songwriter, actor, musical director, composer, arranger, producer, engineer, he's been there, done it.
He is simply a stunning singer with a wonderfully expressive and carefully controlled voice belying passion, allied to a dazzling guitar technique; Dick just doesn't do gigs which are 'ordinary'.
Gaughan is well known for his forthright and long-time consistently held, oft-expressed political views and has never been attracted by the current vogue of consensual, namby-pamby, pragmatic and equivocating politics. Dick gives voice to an uncompromising solidarity with the flotsam and jetsam of tunnel-vision global capitalism: the victims, the helpless, the wronged, the fighters,
the brawny working-class bravehearts who made capitalism work (after a fashion).
The hideous events in Chile in 1973, when the liberal world lost not only Allende but also the poet and singer Victor Jara, served to underline a young Gaughan's empathy with the oppressed, wherever on this planet they may be, and amplified his desire to shout their case from the metaphorical rooftops. And out of that solidarity, Gaughan burns. There is fire. There is anger.
There is cauterising scorn.
In more recent years Dick has composed and arranged music for films and television dramas and
his 90-minute orchestral work, Timewaves, was performed as the closing concert at the 2004 Celtic Connections festival in Glasgow. He also had a commissioned orchestral work performed at Celtic Connections in January 2007 called Treaty 300 (three hundred years since the Act of Union between England and Scotland).
As ever, the past 18-24 months have seen Dick on the road as usual in the UK, Ireland, Canada (touring with a reggae band!) - the days' work of the professional entertainer. Dick Gaughan is a troubadour on that road, taking his songs and music around the world and only making the occasional foray into the recording studio when the urge comes on him. And, in the course of it all, making new friends, new enemies, and influencing people.
In December 2009 Dick was honoured by being inducted into the Scots Trad Music Hall of Fame. Then, less than two months later in London, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award at BBC Radio 2's annual Folk Awards ceremony. Dick is the only performer to have been so honoured by his musical peers both north and south of the Border. In fact Dick was handed the BBC Radio 2 award by Neil Finn (of Crowded House) who had flown all the way from New Zealand at his own expense to be able to do so! Remarkable