Interviewing Andrew Cronshaw is a bit like watching Waragamba Dam in flood.

There’s a mighty capacity, but the volume contained therein and the urge for it to surge out means there’s a fair old splashing and cascading over the spillway.

(This is a musical knowledge thing, not early-onset incontinence — just did want to clarify that one.)

Andrew Cronshaw (and the relatively more calm, still waters of Ian Blake) have been comrades in music of the world for many a year, and delighted audiences at the National Folk Festival in 2010.

A very salient memory is a packed performance in the Coorong on the Saturday evening when the MC (me) had been directed erroneously to the Budawang and ended up sprinting twixt venues, doing a slide into home base staying upright to collect a microphone and bounce on to stage to give a slightly breathy but knowledgeable intro courtesy of having seen them both at the National Library of Australia mid-week.

Andrew Cronshaw and Ian Blake were performing at a fantastic afternoon on Aspen Island, literally in the shadows of Canberra’s Carillon, on a balmy Monday afternoon in mid-March as Canberra celebrated a day before turning 100 years young. I grabbed a few minutes with Andrew and Ian as the zephyrs zephyred and the dragon boats came in and the sound guys eventually started to test the drums on stage.

*** THE AUDIO OF THIS INTERVIEW HAS BEEN DELETED FROM SOUNDCLOUD DUE TO SPACE LIMITATIONS ***

*** THE AUDIO OF THIS INTERVIEW HAS BEEN DELETED FROM SOUNDCLOUD DUE TO SPACE LIMITATIONS ***

Andrew and Ian will be performing with the new collective badged SANS:

Andrew Cronshaw – electric zither, fujara, marovantele, kantele, ba-wu etc.
Sanna Kurki-Suonio – voice 
Tigran Aleksanyan – Armenian duduk 
Ian Blake – bass clarinet, soprano sax etc.

Performance times at the National Folk Festival:

Friday 29th March – Trocadero, 9pm
Saturday 30th March – Budawang, 12.30pm
Sunday 31st March – Marquee, 4pm