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Dawn Egan, Folksinger, folk music, Blue Mountains

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dawn Egan ~ Biography

Photograph of Dawn by Nigel Foote

Though born in Sydney, Dawn Egan grew up in the Central West town of Bathurst, NSW, where she began playing the guitar and singing folk songs in local halls and coffee shops at the age of fifteen.

While still at high school, Dawn met Nigel Foote who was visiting the Morgan family at Abercrombie House, across the road from where she was staying ... they would marry ten years later.

After settling in the Blue Mountains in 1983, Dawn took up the Celtic harp, and two years later began working professionally as a folk duo with Nigel playing guitar. The couple found they were soon in demand for their atmospheric, traditional music, and they established themselves as full-time folk musicians in the mountains.

Nigel and Dawn immersed themselves in the folk scene, taking over the running of the original Katoomba Folk Club from which they formed Blue Mountains Folk. They invited Stuart Cowell and then, Al Ward to join the team, and the combination of international contacts, music-industry experience and promotional flair, coupled with the magic of Bob and Annette Charter's Clarendon Theatre, created a folk club of the highest calibre. Blue Mountains Folk helped establish Katoomba as a destination for touring artists.

In 1987, Dawn released her debut album, Shooting-Stars & Wishing-Wells, receiving strong reviews and good airplay on Sydney radio. In response to demand at their gigs, Dawn and Nigel released an instrumental album, Spirit Of The Strings which sold well and stimulated bookings – the duo played more than one thousand gigs over the next few years.

Dawn signed with the ABC Music Label in 1998, releasing four CDs of traditional Celtic Harp tunes, produced by Andrew Knight, and for which she was nominated for two ARIA Awards.

Now the mother of three boys, Dawn continues to play and teach Celtic harp, make quilts and tend a fairy-tale garden in the mountains.

 

Quotes

Dawn Egan has one of those crystal-clear, Joan Baez voices, and her renditions of The Trees They Grow High, Reynardine and Silkie are delivered with much beauty.

Bruce Elder, Sydney Morning Herald

A woman whose music is firmly grounded in the Celtic tradition, and whose haunting, enchanting melodies carry one back through time, to the old stone inns and windswept fields of Ireland. ABC Music

I love many forms of music, but I'm always drawn back to the beauty of the traditional styles ... Dawn Egan

 

Discography

Shooting-Stars & Wishing-Wells

Spirit Of The Strings

Sleep Baby Sleep

Hush-a-Bye

Yulefest

Late Night

 

 

 

 

 

 

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