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Giles Lewin is a British violinist [1] and bagpiper. Currently a member of The Carnival Band, he was also a founding member of the folk band, Bellowhead.
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Giles Lewin is a British violinist [1] and bagpiper. Currently a member of The Carnival Band, he was also a founding member of the folk band, Bellowhead.
He was born in Essex in 1960 or slightly earlier.[ citation needed ] At age nine, he sang the female lead in Mozart's "Bastien et Bastienne". At Cambridge University he acquired a love of Irish traditional music. His admiration for William Lawes led him to join a group called The Medieval Players (1981–1987). In 1983 they performed Rabelais's "Gargantua" with actors, puppets and acrobats. Their version of medieval music was gutsy, compared to most early music consorts of the time. In 1987 he became a founder member of the Dufay Collective. He was also a member of the group "Afterhours" (1989–1995).
In 1989 Lewin spent several months in Cairo to study Arabic violin under Ashraf al Sarki. Lewin is a vocalist and plays fiddle, vielle, rebec, gittern, shawms, recorder, mandolin, pipe and tabor. His most remarkable skills are as a player of the Arabic violin and as a player of the single-drone medieval bagpipes. He is an occasional member of the Egyptian group Maqaam.
The Carnival Band evolved out of The Medieval Players. The combination of Giles Lewin, Andy Watts, Bill Badley and Jub dates from 1985. They have recorded as a backing band for Maddy Prior. Lewin joined up with Vivien Ellis, another member of the Dufay Collective and the Carnival Band to become the duo Alva in 1997, specialising in the music of the troubadours. The songs on "The Bells of Paradise" were first performed at the 2003 York Early Music Festival. Alva also performed at St John's, Smith Square in 2001 as part of a live performance for BBC's "Late Junction". Ellis has been a member of Sinfonye since 1989, and is a member of The Broadside Band. She is involved with jazz, singing with Keith Tippett. Marguerite Hutchison, a member of Magpie Lane, also occasionally performs with Lewin as a duo.
In 2004 Lewin became a founder member of Bellowhead and left in 2008, he was replaced by Sam Sweeney.
In 2008 he accompanied Maddy Prior at the BBC Electric Proms.
Lewin is currently based in Oxford.
In 2008 Lewin released a solo album The Armchair Orienteer (PRKCD103), including a mix of traditional folk tunes and some original tracks. Folkworld said of the album "the most impressing thing is Giles' versability in quite a lot and quite different styles". [2]
Dufay Collective (with Giles Lewin)
Dufay Collective (with Giles Lewin and Vivien Ellis)
Afterhours
Maddy Prior and The Carnival Band
Alva (Giles Lewin and Vivien Ellis)
Giles Lewin, David Miller, London Camerata et al.
Philip Pickett, New London Consort, Nigel Eaton, Giles Lewin et al.
Invocation (Julia Gooding, Timothy Roberts, Giles Lewin et al.)
Ian Giles, John Spiers, Jon Boden, Giles Lewin
Giles Lewin
Maddy Prior with Hannah James & Giles Lewin
The rebec is a bowed stringed instrument of the Medieval era and the early Renaissance. In its most common form, it has a narrow boat-shaped body and one to five strings.
Steeleye Span are a British folk rock band formed in 1969 in England by Fairport Convention bass player Ashley Hutchings and established London folk club duo Tim Hart and Maddy Prior. The band were part of the 1970s British folk revival, and were commercially successful in that period, with four Top 40 albums and two hit singles: "Gaudete" and "All Around My Hat".
Madeleine Edith Prior MBE is an English folk rock singer, best known as the lead vocalist of Steeleye Span. She was born in Blackpool and moved to St Albans in her teens. Her father, Allan Prior, was co-creator of the police drama Z-Cars. She was married to Steeleye bass guitarist Rick Kemp, and their daughter, Rose Kemp, is also a singer. Their son, Alex Kemp, is, like his father, a guitarist and has deputised for his father playing bass guitar for Steeleye Span. She was part of the singing duo 'Mac & Maddy', with Mac MacLeod. She then performed with Tim Hart and recorded two albums with him, before they helped to found the group Steeleye Span, in 1969. She left Steeleye Span in 1997, but returned in 2002, and has toured with them since. With June Tabor she was the singing duo Silly Sisters. She toured with the Carnival Band, in 2007, and with Giles Lewin and Hannah James, in 2012 and 2013. She has released singles and albums as a solo artist, with these bands and in several collaborations. She runs an Arts Centre called Stones Barn, in Bewcastle, in Cumbria, which offers residential courses.
John Michael Kirkpatrick is an English musician, playing free reed instruments such as the accordion and concertina and performing English folk songs and tunes.
Spiers and Boden are an English folk duo. John Spiers plays melodeon and concertina, while Jon Boden sings and plays fiddle and guitar while stamping the rhythm on a stomp box. Spiers and Boden were founding members of the folk band Bellowhead.
Bellowhead is an English contemporary folk band, active from 2004 to 2016, reforming in 2020. The eleven-piece act played traditional dance tunes, folk songs and shanties, with arrangements drawing inspiration from a wide range of musical styles and influences. The band included percussion and a four-piece brass section. Bellowhead's bandmembers played more than 20 instruments among them, whilst all performers provided vocals.
Rose Kemp is an English singer and guitarist who performs in a variety of musical genres. She is the daughter of Maddy Prior and Rick Kemp of the folk-rock band Steeleye Span.
Kerfuffle were a four-piece English folk band, originally formed in 2001 around the East Midlands and South Yorkshire regions of the UK, initially comprising Hannah James, Sam Sweeney, Chris Thornton-Smith (guitar) and Tom Sweeney. Thornton-Smith was replaced by Jamie Roberts in 2007. Kerfuffle disbanded in August 2010.
Hang Up Sorrow and Care is an album by Maddy Prior and the Carnival Band. Released in 1995, it is a loose concept album, with renditions of songs that were written hundreds of years ago.
A Tapestry of Carols is an album by Maddy Prior. It is a collection of ancient carols from across Europe, played by The Carnival Band on replicas of medieval instruments. It was recorded at The Quaker Meeting House, Frenchay, near Bristol and released in 1987.
An Evening of Carols and Capers is an album by Maddy Prior with The Carnival Band.
Jon Boden is a singer, composer and musician, best known as lead singer and main arranger of Bellowhead. His first instrument is the fiddle and he is a proponent of "English traditional fiddle style" and also of "fiddle singing", both of which he employed in Bellowhead, in the duo Spiers & Boden, and previously as a member of Eliza Carthy’s Ratcatchers.
Liam Genockey is an Irish musician, who is the drummer with British folk rock band Steeleye Span.
Sing Lustily And With Good Courage is an album by Maddy Prior and the Carnival Band. It was recorded at Valley Recordings in March 1990 and released as a CD on the Saydisc label.
The Carnival Band is an English early music group. Their broad repertoire focuses on popular music from the 16th and 17th centuries, and traditional music from around the world. Presentation is informal and humorous, and in the spirit of medieval and renaissance Carnival. The band was founded by Andy Watts and Giles Lewin while they were members of the Medieval Players touring theatre company in the 1980s. They have had a long association with Maddy Prior.
Sam Sweeney is a multi-instrumental English folk musician.
Medieval folk rock, medieval rock or medieval folk is a musical subgenre that emerged in the early 1970s in England and Germany which combined elements of early music with rock music. It grew out of the British folk rock and progressive folk movements of the late 1960s. Despite the name, the term was used indiscriminately to categorise performers who incorporated elements of medieval, renaissance and baroque music into their work and sometimes to describe groups who used few, or no, electric instruments. This subgenre reached its height towards the middle of the 1970s when it achieved some mainstream success in Britain, but within a few years most groups had either disbanded, or were absorbed into the wider movements of progressive folk and progressive rock. Nevertheless, the genre had a considerable impact within progressive rock where early music, and medievalism in general, was a major influence and through that in the development of heavy metal. More recently medieval folk rock has revived in popularity along with other forms of medieval inspired music such as Dark Wave orientated neo-Medieval music and medieval metal.
Shrewsbury Folk Festival is an annual festival of folk and world music and traditional dance held in the town of Shrewsbury in Shropshire, England.
"The Beggars Chorus" or "The Jovial Crew" is an English broadside ballad from the mid-18th century. It celebrates the life of a beggar, and treats begging as a legitimate English trade. Sung to the tune of A Begging We Will Go. Copies of the broadside can be found in the British Library, the National Library of Scotland, and the Huntington Library.
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