Alan Stivell's Renaissance of the Celtic Harp from 1971

 

From the usual discogs:

Real Name: Alan Cochevelou

Profile: Multi-instrumentalist, born January 6, 1944 in Riom, Auvergne, France. Best known for popularising the Celtic harp.

Son of Jord Cochevelou. Was taught the harp by Denise Mégevand. In 1961 he became the "penn-soner" (lead) of Bagad Bleimor.  [A celtic music band with bagpipes that is.]

I confess I haven't actually ventured beyond this 1971 album with info here, which I heard when quite young. At that time the first track which is called Ys (a legend and mythical city) completely entranced me with the supernatural and ethereal, spacey feeling of the harp which is so reverbed and echoey and the surrounding arrangement. In addition to the harp, notice Alan plays bagpipes, bombarde, and flute on this record. Otherwise he's backed by a chamber orchestra set of players complete with strings and cellos.  Starting with the rainy stormy sounds which were a little overdone in albums back in the day, we move on to that incredibly euharmonious and pleasing harp sound playing arpeggios, before it moves into some obligato patterns repeated and a cello commences a really plaintive melody, a bit like the old Canadian Amakudari album I loved so much back here. On top of that the flute starts playing another melody, really taking it off into the heavens. This kind of complicated acoustic folk is so far beyond the usual ethnic genre in its complexity.  Unfortunately, the remainder of the album is a little more simplistic and to me not necessarily worth remembering and rehearing the way the first track is.

Play it here:

https://archive.org/details/01.-ys

Since the rest of the LP was less interesting in terms of complex composition I didn't venture past this one to see if there's more in his oeuvre worth hearing but maybe someone else can enlighten us on that.

Hopefully others can enjoy this as much as I've enjoyed it in my life.