With their debut album, nominated for a 2024 Canadian Folk Music Award for Instrumental Group of the Year, Medusa’s dynamic arrangement style cross-pollinates the sounds of Middle Eastern, Scandinavian, Celtic, Appalachian, and Eastern European music, as well as original tunes, to create something previously unheard.
Medusa is : Georgia Hathaway, Lea Kirstein, Marta Sołek, and Saskia Tomkins (originally from the UK and now based in Canada). For these four seasoned string players, whose collective experience spans decades, Medusa is a refuge for natural creation.
Marta Solek and Saskia Tomkins resurrect the Suka, the Płosk fidel, and the Nyckelharpa – near-forgotten traditional folk fiddles with disreputable connotations that were rejected for centuries in their home countries of Poland and Sweden.