If it wasn’t for COVID, the new young star of the classical guitar, Clancy McLeod, would not be playing in Australia.
Clancy had been carving out his career in the UK, a long way from his parents’ home in Maldon. But unable to keep touring in Europe, he returned to Maldon and put in a lot of COVID enforced practice hours. The practice paid off with prize wins in the prestigious Adelaide International Guitar Competition and the Melbourne Recital Centre’s Great Romantics Competition.
Now he’s bringing his music to Central Victoria. “I was brought face to face with the struggles of rural Australia when I returned home,” Clancy said. “We had fires and floods as well as the pandemic. The pain of that sits heavy with us, and it seeped into my playing.”
“The unamplified guitar is a wonderfully expressive instrument. Its emotion is all in your fingers, and I’ve brought together a program that comes out of that pain and suffering and into the love and the beauty that resides behind it. Music by Bach, by Barrios, by Rodrigo.”
Clancy’s candlelit concert will be the opening performance in Maldon’s month of music, theatre and mayhem Maldon In Winter.
Fellow Maldon musician, Josephine Emery, says of Clancy’s playing, “His performance is transfixing. When he played Bach, I was so captivated I lost track of the time. He totally inhabited that music and re made it for me, right before my eyes and ears.”
Maldon In Winter opens with Clancy By Candlelight on Friday, 24 June. A spell binding evening of world class music by a fresh new star. Bookings www.maldon.org.au/maldon-in-winter.
This article appeared in the Tarrangower Times, 10 June 2022.
