Presented by Small World Music

Join us as we celebrate the EP release of Medusa

Featuring Special guest: Brenna MacCrimmon

About the band:
Medusa would slay at a Hobbit family wedding. Wielding a sound that would turn classical music scholars to stone, these four folk musicians are reimagining the Western string quartet. By inviting back voices previously regarded as too ugly for “polite society,” Medusa tempts us to redefine what is beautiful.

With their forthcoming EP, 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. With this debut release, the band aims to connect audiences across dividing lines of culture and identity to reveal the common threads beneath.

Medusa is Georgia Hathaway, Lea Kirstein, Marta Sołek, and Saskia Tomkins. For these four seasoned string players, whose collective experience as side players in successful bands spans decades, Medusa is a refuge for natural creation. Their immediate and electrifying connection is transmuted through a common string language, a love of enigmatic and obscure folk fiddles, and their personal stories of navigating society’s liminal spaces.



About Brenna MacCrimmon:
Brenna MacCrimmon has been studying and performing the music of Turkey and the Balkans since the early 1980’s. She has performed in Turkey and abroad with Selim Sesler and Karsılama (trad Turkish Roma), Muammer Ketencoğlu (trad Balkan) and experimental psych group Baba Zula. She has also toured across Europe with Balkan beat DJ Shantel and the Bucovina Club Orkestra. She has recorded with the above musicians and has appeared as a guest on many diverse albums and film soundtracks in Canada, the US and Europe. She is a featured performer in “Crossing the Bridge’’, Fatih Akın’s 2005 documentary of the Istanbul music scene. In 2010, she found herself in Moscow as a member of the cast of Bobble with Bobby McFerrin. In Toronto she sings with vocal quartet Turkwaz and often has a lot to do with ukuleles.

The 2023 Small World Music Series is generously supported by TD Bank of Canada, the Government of Canada, Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, and the City of Toronto through the Toronto Arts Council.