Raine Hamilton’s Brave Land, out today, is a concept album: inspired by the mountainous landscape they encountered while touring, it’s music made for reaching between different worlds, centering around courage, connection, and wisdom, and showcasing resonant chamber-folk with prism-clear, bright vocals, and strings along the way.
“It’s about the beauty of being alive and the courage that can take,” Hamilton says of the album’s title track, a theme that also weaves throughout the album as a whole.
At first, I was confused when mountain dwellers would give directions like, ‘Go up the mountain and turn left.’ Up? We don’t have directions like that on the prairie. It is not a thing. But up really intrigued me,” Hamilton says of the album. “If the prairie was teaching me to be still, the mountains were teaching me to move. Mountains are a landscape that connects two different worlds. They are land, reaching up into the realm of the sky. Wow. That is brave, I thought. This brave land connecting the earth-bound into spirit.
Based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Hamilton grew up writing songs as part of a musical family. Their music stretches the boundaries of contemporary folk, combining the traditions of singer-songwriter, lyric-centered songs, and fiddling, with classically influenced string parts that borrow from a renaissance counterpoint.
For both Brave Land and Hamilton’s 2018 release, Night Sky, they worked with longtime collaborators Quintin Bart on double bass, and Natanielle Felicitas on cello. The three musicians have been co-composing arrangements and recording the newest album since fall 2019, interrupted in March 2020 by the pandemic and completed over the summer.
BIO
Raine is part prairie songstress, part storyweaver; Each song has a story, delivered between songs with humour and grace. Raine invites deep love of the violin into the singer-songwriter genre, writing for violin and voice, as well as for guitar and voice. Joined by cello and upright bass, expect string arrangements that push and pull, that move as they console.
A classical violinist and musicologist by training, Raine and their string trio offer string-quartet-like arrangements of Raine’s original songs. They call this chamber-folk, a hybrid of the classical tradition of string quartet chamber music, with the singer songwriter folk that comes so organically to Raine.
Raine’s latest work, the full-length album Brave Land (2021-22), is a concept album about mountains, and the courage, wisdom, and otherworldly connection they represent. Here, as in Raine’s 2018 album Night Sky, the songs are set to intricate and seasoned arrangements for guitar, violin, cello, and double bass. Once again Raine has worked with string trio collaborators Quintin Bart on double bass, Natanielle Felicitas on cello, and Lloyd Peterson as producer/engineer.
Raine believes that music is for everyone, and that we all have something to share. An experienced educator, Raine offers workshops in songwriting and fiddle tune writing (EN/FR). Raine also offers concerts with American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation, to help make live music and the community that comes with it more accessible to the Deaf community.
Raine is the recipient of the 2018 Canadian Folk Music Award for Emerging Artist of the Year! Raine has toured Canada extensively, driving, flying, and floating coast to coast. Highlights include: Performing songs with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra (3 times!), performing with the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, playing a show in a cave (10 stories below the earth!), playing festivals across Canada (Vancouver Folk Festival, Vancouver Island Music Fest, Atlin Festival, Home County, Filberg Fest, Lilac Fest, Harvest Moon, Trout Forest), playing for passage on Via Rail, and meeting so many amazing humans along the way.
