Chris Crilly

Chris Crilly is a Canadian musician and composer, who has won the Genie Award for Best Original Score at the 22nd Genie Awards in 2002 for Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner. He was born in Bangor, County Down, Northern Ireland in 1948 and educated in England and Canada, with choral training in the Schola Cantorum tradition under Geoffrey Tristram at St. Peter's School and Christchurch Priory, Dorset UK. He also studied the piano with Audrey King. Crilly was exposed to West African music while his family was stationed in Ghana during the 1950s and 60's. Moving to Canada in 1967 he was trained in filmmaking at Loyola College Université de Montréal. It was after an extended stay in Ghana in 1970 to 1971 that Crilly began his searched for collaborators in a new approach to Celtic music; one that would step outside the traditional constraints. He felt a need to combine his classical choral training and the percussion possibilities he experienced in West Africa. In 1973 in Montreal, Crilly teamed up with fellow Irishman Toby Kinsella, guitarist Richard Chapman, fiddler Elliot Selick, singer and guitarist Pierre Guérin and percussionist Ed Moore to form Na Baird, the Montreal Celtic band which w... ()