Press Release

Published December 3, 2023.

A sublime collection of songs from Greece and Macedonia by vocalist Kate Conklin & banjoist Bryan Landers, WIDOW reverberates with sensuality, longing, desire, and desolation.

Conceived, arranged, performed, and produced by Kate and Bryan, WIDOW is a mesmerizing expression of intimacy, wildness, and the romance of solitude. These intricate melodies and expansive arrangements elicit chills throughout, as the duo takes you from sleeping on floorboards and sauntering along desolate cobblestone streets, to death marches and whispered, ethereal prayers.

Kate Conklin is a singular and iconic singer of operatic and folk styles in more than 17 languages. A former Cirque du Soleil singer and Fulbright Scholar to Bulgaria, Kate is known for her magnificent and precise singing, and her playful gravitas. From delicately whispering in your ear in the tender Veno, pile, Veno, to a full-out wail in Smyrnéiko Minore, Kate's voice weaves a spell that utterly envelops the listener.

Bryan Landers is a multi-instrumentalist, designer, and composer who takes banjo to the most far-reaching expanses. In Bryan's hands, the banjo thrums and jangles in the fast-paced Izlezi Vido, and sparkles in the breath-taking Kirajdžiče, Jabandžiče. In other songs like Dhen Me Toumbáris and Stojane, More Stojane, Bryan uses a low-tuned, nylon string banjo, producing a rich tone evocative of West African kora.

Like the origins of the songs themselves which blend influences from Greece, Turkey, Bosnia, Serbia and more, the duo bring things out in the music and in each other that are alchemical and entrancing. The underlying feeling of this record is a subtly shifting dance of love, exquisite pain, and defiance.

"These songs have been incubating for decades," says Kate, who learned these songs over 20 years ago from mentors and icons of the music, sitting at the feet of masters, and listening to old 78s. "These songs are all ones that have captivated and continued to shape me for years. It's a life-long entanglement. I have deep reverence for this music and these traditions. I don't rush things. This record came through when there was the right container."

"The songs have an essence, a resonant frequency. So when we arrange them, we're attuning to that frequency and seeing how we and the songs resonate together. Sometimes it comes immediately and simply, and sometimes the songs have to rearrange us and our instruments for a while. Bryan's hands have to learn how to do things that haven't been invented yet, or there's a particular pulsation that is teaching my voice how to reorganize itself. The songs show us what they are. It's really clear when they become fully potentiated. You can feel the coherence."

As the title suggests, the record reckons with the widow archetype, which is prevalent in Greek culture. WIDOW takes the idea of the solitary, beguiling siren and revisions her as a radically, unrepentantly free woman.

"The very life force of this record is reclamation." says Kate. "The absolute rightness of belonging to yourself.”

Listen to the first album.

© Kate Conklin. All rights reserved.