Folk Bands and Artists
Woven Gold
http://www.helenbamber.org/music-group
Woven Gold, the music group of the Helen Bamber Foundation, includes people from Algeria, Burma, Chechnya, Iran, Kurdistan, Pakistan, many African countries as well as professional musicians living in the UK. The group performs music from all over the world as well as composing new music together.
The Helen Bamber Foundation is a specialist UK human rights charity with extensive experience working with people who have survived extreme physical, sexual and psychological violence. A Kurdish client of the Helen Bamber Foundation who has been with Woven Gold since its inception says:
“I believe that music is the best way to live without borders, in peace, as a world family. Woven Gold has shown us that though they may have different colours and notes, the sounds are universal.”
In 2009 Woven Gold recorded an album, Much More Than Metal; listen here.
In 2010 the Helen Bamber Foundation commissioned composer John Barber to write a new dramatic cantata, Consider the Lilies. Woven Gold contributed to the libretto and score, and performed in the premiere under the baton of conductor Howard Moody alongside professional soloists, the Choral Scholars of St-Martin-in-the-Fields, La Foila Orchestra and The New Foundling Children’s Choir
Rupert Christiansen wrote in The Daily Telegraph: ‘to hear these voices united in daring to sing such lines as “More than a survivor, I am more” or “All that was beaten has not beaten me / All that was taken has not taken me” was both inspiring and sobering.’
