STORIES
Strathspey stories
The Films
Mother Spey, the land of woods, mountains, lochs, music and stories. Storyteller Dave Francis and composer Hamish Napier set the scene for a series of 8 short films centred on the music and stories of Strathspey in the Scottish Highlands.
Credits
Commissioned by the Scottish International Storytelling Festival 2020.
Devised & Performed by David Francis & Hamish Napier
Film and music by Hamish Napier (all on a smartphone)
The Live Audiovisual Production
Four years later we were invited by the to create a stage version of Strathspey Stories.
This 1-hour, audio-visual show premiered in October 2024 at the Scottish International Storytelling Festival.
This is a short promo video with highlights from the show
Credits
Produced and Performed by David Francis & Hamish Napier
Live Audiovisuals by Hamish Napier
Badenoch the Storylands
In 2020 and 2021 I produced a series of tales, legends and historical stories for Badenoch Heritage & the Cairngorms National Park, for the new Badenoch The Storylands App.
I researched, wrote and narrated 20 audio stories about Badenoch with the help of 17 heritage enthusiasts, 15 voice actors and 4 musicians, using music from the Strathspey Trilogy as a soundtrack. These were released as 4 volumes of audio stories.
JACK & THE DANCING TREES
Also with David Francis…
This is one of the most deeply gratifying projects I’ve ever had the pleasure of working on. David Francis and I had worked on a musical accompaniment for this story together when co-directing a concert with the Ceol Mor youth folk ensemble at the Aberdeen International Youth Festival.
I also had several musical off-cuts, outtakes, odds and ends from all my album The Woods - beautiful string parts, guitar fingered-picked patterns and solo piano parts. My co-producer Andrea Gobbi and I knew we had to do something cool with them. Why not use them to create a soundtrack to Dave’s storytelling? First, I had to record Dave, and with videographer friend Paul Jennings in tow, I went to Edinburgh to the Scottish Storytelling Centre to record Dave telling the story live on the stage. My wife, sister-in-law and wee nephew are the live audience in the video. We did 3 takes of it but they were all brilliant in different ways.
‘Jack & the Dancing Trees’ is a traditional Scottish fireside story, and Dave’s version here is adapted from a version by the great storyteller Stanley Robertson.
Credits
Music by Hamish Napier Music adapted from the 2020 album 'The Woods'.
Mixed and engineered by Andrea Gobbi
Filmed by Paul Jennings Filmed at the Scottish Storytelling Centre, Royal Mile, Edinburgh in Summer 2019.
The track is the finale from my 2020 EP The Schawaldouris [Wanderers in the Woods] - essentially half an hour of bonus extras for the album The Woods.