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About Carnyx & Co.
Here in Scotland, a team comprising musicologist John Purser, archaeologist Fraser Hunter, silversmith John Creed, and myself as musician, have reconstructed the Deskford Carnyx - until recently, the most complete fragment of the instrument ever unearthed. To our astonishment, the result is not only a beautiful artefact, but an exciting musical instrument, with a unique voice of enormous expressive subtlety. However, the carnyx is much more than that.
I regard the carnyx as a symbol, a key that can unlock possibilities far beyond the bounds of its own potential as either a musical instrument or an archaeological artefact. The projects so far completed, and those currently being enacted, centre around the carnyx itself, and reveal, I believe, both artistic and academic integrity of the highest order. Nonetheless, these projects have also capitalised to a greater or lesser extent upon the sensational nature of the instrument, and its mysterious and romantic resonance. Therein lies its enormous value - cultural "medicine" that people actually want to swallow!
Because of this quality, it has also already been possible both to present supposedly difficult contemporary music to audiences who would otherwise not have considered listening, and shown groups of people facts about the archaeology and history of our ancestors that they would not otherwise have bothered to look at. Children have been encouraged, successfully, to write their own music, which they may never otherwise have experienced - and most people so far exposed to these projects have expressed a delight in experiencing an "ancestral voice". To continue this work, we have formed a company with charitable status, Carnyx & Co.
Put simply, what we want to achieve is a continuation and extension of all of this work. Because as an artist my interests and experience are unusually wide ranging - I have worked at the highest level with early music, jazz, classical, and contemporary western music, collaborated with music of many other ethnic origins, and have also composed and performed for and within the worlds of dance and theatre - I have come to see all the arts as an essential and interlocking balancing mechanism of human society. I see the carnyx as a tool to help achieve this for a wider group of people than I could normally reach through the concert hall or theatre. The fruits of this work have been presented to audiences throughout the world in recitals, broadcasts and lectures. Four CDs document this work, and all proceeds from the sale of one of these, Forest ~ River ~ Ocean go to help Carnyx & Co produce new work and research.
John Kenny