A movie has been made out of Lee Craigie’s trip to Cape Wrath 2015! Together with music from the album “Lighthouse Stories” and fragments from Jeanette Winterson’s novel Lighthousekeeping. I feel stunned! Click here for a teaser!

The film is broadcasted at Edinburgh Film Festival 6-7 feb 2016 where she also tells about the trip.

Excerpts from her blog:

“Perhaps I should have given up and accepted that it [Cape Wrath] just wasn’t meant to be but then this happened. I was at a road race in an out of the way north eastern coastal town shortly after yet another failed attempt to visit the Cape when a guy came up to me and told me there was a gig about to start in a nearby lighthouse. I ambled along after the race and became engulfed in a friendly fold of woollen jumpers and wellington boots while the wind and rain did their thing outside. On a small, makeshift stage there sat singing a Swedish angel. Sofie Livebrant had written her entire album “Lighthouse Stories” using prose taken from a book set at Cape Wrath. In the days that followed, I listened to Sofie’s music and read the book that inspired her album (“Lighthouse Keeping” by Jeannette Winterson). Both touched me deeply and a theme emerged that sent me reeling. It was that of attempting to balance two powerful aspects of my personality, the need for freedom and the need for belonging. I was heading back to Cape Wrath”

We’re proudly announcing that the “Lighthouse Stories” album is nominated to the Manifest Prize, category VISA (Folk Tune). Together with lots of other lovely artists and the Manifest Gala will be FEB 5 2016 at NALEN in Stockholm! Thanks to all involved! Also we’re looking forward to see the Music – documentary broadcasted during 2016 on Swedish Television!

Happy New Year to You!

This year is a dreaming year. I want to travel the Baltic Sea, play Jeanette’s, Emily’s and Karin’s songs at Libraries and Lighthouses, make a new album Secrets with my own lyrics, meditate and dance! I would like to connect and contribute with my music to people’s stories and environmental visions. Let see if that is what’s going to be…

IF SAILOR tales to sailor tunes, 
   Storm and adventure, heat and cold, 
If schooners, islands, and maroons,
   And Buccaneers and buried Gold, 
And all the old romance, retold 
   Exactly in the ancient way, 
Can please, as me they pleased of old,
   The wiser youngsters of to-day:

- So be it, and fall on! If not,
   If studious youth no longer crave,
His ancient appetites forgot,
   Kingston, or Ballantyne the brave, 
Or Cooper of the wood and wave:
   So be it, also! And may I 
All my pirates share the grave
   Where these and their creations lie!

(Robert Louis Stevenson "Treasure Island")

November for me is composing new songs by the fire literarily and also planning next years BALTIC SEA TOUR 2016 where we will continue our journey at sea with Lighthouse Stories. This time with a complementary theme: Music & Miljö (Music & Environment). In springtime our music documentary “Maybe we’ll only play before the gulls” will be broadcasted on Swedish Television.

…even though the summers tour is whirling inside with its joy and experiences, my god what a trip. A life time event!

November concerts:

6/11 11.00 and 20.30 ca  Åre Sustainability Summit

20/11 Sjöhistoriska Museet. GIG POSTPONED TO SPRING due to ILLNESS.  SEE YOU IN SPRING 2016!

22/11 DN-författarkryssning, 16.00 (endast prenumeranter!)

LIGHTHOUSE STORIES CONCERT TOUR 2015

24/4 Nakkehoved Fyr, Danmark

12/6 Dexter Jazzclub, Odense

13/6 Maritimt Museum, Svendborg

11/7 Götala herrgård

12/7 Ljungs kyrka

13/7 Åstols Rökeri/Pater Noster Fyr, Sverige

14/7 Kullens Fyrplats, Sverige

16/7 Kinnaird Head Lighthouse, Fraserburgh, Scotland

18/7 Cromarty Lighthouse, Marine Biology Station, Scotland

20/7 Souter Lighthouse, New Castle, National Trust, England

22/7 Hurst Castle Lighthouse, England

24/7 Marstein Fyr, Norge

26/7 Lindesnes Fyr, Norge

14/8 Göteborgs Stadsbibliotek 19.00, Swe

15/8 Skottvång Gruva 19.00, Swe

16/8 Stevns Fyr 15.00, DK

19/8 Musikbåten Blidösund 18.30, Stockholm, SWE

28/8 Isbrytaren St:Erik Wasamuseet 19.00, SWE

19/9 Lunds Kulturnatt, Stadsteatern i Lund, 20.00 Swe

24/9 Book Fair Gothenburg, Swedish Radio Monter, 11.00 Swe

4/12 STALLET, Swe CANCELLED! Looking forward to SPRING 2016 and the release of LIGHTHOUSE STORIES – film documentary!

This Concert Tour is made possible with support from

For more information and personal updates please click this link!

Sofie Livebrant has put passages from Jeanette Wintersons’ novel Lighthousekeeping to music. The novel tells the story of the orphaned girl Silver who grows up at Cape Wrath Lighthouse in northern Scotland with the blind lighthousekeeper Mr Pew. He tells her stories;  Tristan and Isolde, Captain Scott…Summer 2015 a concert tour will take place around the North Sea. A group of three musicians and a filmteam will be visiting lighthouses around the North Sea: United Kingdom, Sweden, Denmark and Norway, tracing the old sailor paths. A music film will be the outcome, broadcasted Spring 2016 on Swedish Television.

“Tell me a story, Pew! What story child? One that begins again. That’s the story of life. But is it the story of my life? Only if you tell it”

A FILM TEASER CLICK HERE

‘I believe that storytelling is a way of navigating our lives. Fact are partial. Fiction is a more complete truth.  If we read ourselves as narrative, we can change the story that we are. If we read ourselves as literal and fixed, we find we can change nothing.’ (JW)

See you there? Love SOFIE

Sept 5th A Beautiful letter and “story” from Janie and Menno, Scotland!

Dear Sofie

Earlier this summer I saw a poster for your concert in Cromarty.  We live in Cromarty and have a love for lighthouses, rocks, the north-west coast of Scotland and music.  So, I read Jeanette Winterson’s ‘Lighthousekeeping’, loved it and then we heard you play in the boat shed by the Cromarty lighthouse on a day when the wind could have blown the fins off a fish.  We were blown away by the sounds and beauty of your concert.

Inspired by your beautiful voice and songs we set off for Cape Wrath (CD playing all the time).  In early August we crossed the kyle with John at the helm and then up the wee track with Stewart at the wheel.  We meet Pew (John) and each of them remembered you, “Oh, Sofie, she swam in the lochs”.  It was somewhere we had dreamed of coming to but had never made the journey… it was somewhere where the gulls swung by and the ravens called, and this “turning point” of the Vikings entered our hearts and shook us.

The novel and your songs reveal themselves like layers in the sandstone, each listening/ reading open the door a little more.

You sang a wonderful song that day about “the door in the rock that finally swings free when moonlight shines on it… you are the door….” . I wonder where we might hear that song again…

I just want to thank you for the beautiful connections between novel, song, music, life, narrative and dialogue that your work has embedded in us this summer (we do sort of have summers in Scotland!). 

Thank you.

Much love and kindest wishes to all three of you

Janie and Menno

Xxx

– en musik&dikt performance av Sofie Livebrant om tre fantastiska författarinnor från tre århundraden och tre länder! “Deras historier blir till en historia, en människohistoria, en kärlekshistoria, en godnattsaga och din och min historia!” (fritt fr. J.W)

Emily Dickinson 1830-1886 Amherst, USA

En av Amerikas största poeter, blev inte upptäckt förrän efter hennes död då systern samlade ihop 1850 dikter och publicerade dem postumt. Hon skrev om naturen, livet och döden. Älskade blommor, träd och glass. Efter 30 års ålder gick hon inte ut mer. Gifte sig aldrig. Klädde sig i vitt och skrev lappar…

Bind me, I still can sing//Banish, my mandolin strikes true within//Slay, and my soul shall rise//Chanting to paradise//Still thine

Karin Boye 1900-1940 Sverige

Sveriges brinnande 150 cm långa poet och ordgenius. Älskad av generation efter generation. Hon skrev dikter, böcker, översatte böcker och artiklar. Oerhört aktiv, spelade tennis, föreningsmänniska, var känd för sin skämtsamhet, hon var rolig. Hon bodde på många platser: Göteborg, älskade havet och klipporna, Huddinge, Östermalm, Uppsala och Berlin.

Du skall tacka dina gudar om de tvingar dig att gå där du inga fotspår har att lita på.

Du skall tacka dina gudar om de gör all skam till din. Du får söka tillflykt lite längre in —

Jeanette Winterson 1961- Manchester, UK

Nu levande geniförklarad författarinna, växte upp som fosterbarn i frälsningsarmens rörelse. Uppskattad predikant, men blev utkastad ur familjen och rörelsen när det visade sig att hon var kär i fiskhandlarens dotter. Hon älskar sagor, berättelser och älskar att byta tid och rum och sen blanda dem samman. Oerhört rolig och ju tuffare livshändelser, ju roligare skriver hon…Jag har träffat henne en gång och blev så “starstruck” att jag glömde mitt namn…Jag har tonsatt hennes bok Ligthhousekeeping, om en 10 årig flicka som växer upp i en fyr i Skottland.

My mother called me Silver. I was born part precious metal, part pirate. I have no father—My own father came out of the sea and went back that way. I lived in a house cut steep into the bank, the chairs had to be nailed to the floor. We ate food that stuck to the plate: shepherde pie, risotto, scrambled egg. Some people are raised on a hill, most of us are brought up on the flat. I came at life at an angle and thats how I’ve live ever since.

(Lighthousekeeping)

Grattis till ManifestNomineringen 2015 för Karin Boye- tonsättningarna på skivan Några Karin! Avgörs den 6 feb på NALEN!

BY EMILY BRONTË

While listening to “Treasure Island” of Robert Louis Stevenson, I get reminded to not do promises this Next Coming Year! So easy to fool myselves as others. We are all looking for the “treasures” of life and our eyes easily gets shaded at the glimpse of Gold, fortune or fame! As the pirates leaving every scruple for it. Instead of promises I will try to keep an eye on this matter…

This year for me has been an utterly “not possible to survive economically really”- year, but also therefore a year filled with several miracles! I don’t know why the money-rain has been pouring on my head instead of the poor people in town, as I see them every day, freezing their bodies off and sitting still in a most terrible loss of energy!…but it has and I have got all what I needed plus some extra miracles as as two beautiful trips in Europe, a fireplace at home to rest by, two record-releases, a fantastic trip to Scotland, Sweden and Norway to play on lighthouses. A beautiful family. Life can be so unfare! But I am fortunate! And better to be thankful than shameful. Better lead.

Something happened at Cape Wrath Ligthhouse – was it the Ozon-layer, almost a mysterious happening, some power was put in from the beautiful meadows. Before I was so close to end my music-buisness while the social environment has been so ruff these days. No one wants to give money for music! While coming home things started to change in my mind a lot of support showed up and now the Swedish Government has decided to give a great helping hand in next years big event – Ligthhouse Stories 2015 which is a miracle beyond my understanding. But real, so, now, I need to REST to manage to be a good Captain for next year, on this music/storytelling- ship that hopefully will enrich more people than myself….In Spring the full length album Lighthouse Stories, will see the daylight and I will tour with three of my favorite-poetesses BOYE, DICKINSON and WINTERSON during the coming season! All the thank you-s I write in another post. It will be too long! “Fifteen men on the dead mans chest, ho ho ho, and a bottle of rum!”. Happy New year and be nice with yourselves! S

Välkomna på Sofie Livebrant – SOLO – gig tour…på Klingborn&Co – Stockholms bästa smörrebrödsrestaurang med specialkomponerade bröd & närproducerad öl – ledd av Sommelier Johanna Klingborn! Vattenledningsvägen 63.