Anna & Elizabeth

Last Sunday evening, Fiddle and Faff played on Radio Kent's Folk Show which goes out every Sunday evening at 9pm.  We were delighted to meet the presenter, Doug Welch, and to play four of our songs.  The evening also involved a chat with Doug about Fiddle and Faff, and the experience of doing this really made us think about our work and how we approach creating a performance which engages people.  Doug asked us about our influences, and we talked about the gig by Anna & Elizabeth at The Bower House in Maidstone which we'd attended earlier in the year.  Anna & Elizabeth are singers and instrumentalists whose sparse and atmospheric arrangements of traditional Appalachian mountain ballads have brought them international acclaim.  

When we heard them we were captivated by the way their performances draw the audience into their world.  Their singing is truthful and they tell the story from right inside the song. Check them out for yourselves........./http://www.annaandelizabeth.com/

Playing in the Present Moment

It's a funny thing playing music. It's just music, and yet we want to play in the best way we can. We hear other people play and are inspired, but we don't want to play like them, we want to play like us. We want to find our own voice.
And learning the art of improvisation in music is a way in which players can find their voice, their vocabulary and tease out little technical issues which could do with some attention.
Last week I was fortunate to spend 4 days with a small group of fiddle players learning the art of improvisation with Peter Knight. Peter played for many years with Steeleye Span and currently tours with his trio Gigspanner. His own journey in music was significantly altered when he met and played with master of improvisation, saxophonist Trevor Watts. Improvisation has changed the way Peter plays and creates. His courses are an opportunity for other musicians to give attention to their own relationship with music and learn the valuable art of responding in the moment to what other people are playing. Such a valuable thing to learn which then informs everything else they play.
From time to time we hear people say they want to learn to live in the present moment, and being in a room with four fiddle players making music that is based on nothing other than what each of them play there and then, is for me a way of doing just that.

Christine