PETER WALKER

Event information

PETER WALKER
Legendary folk guitarist Peter Walker makes a special appearance at Cecil Sharp House to play pieces from new album Echo of My Soul, as well as from across his extensive back catalogue. Walker provides a personal and musical conduit between multiple traditions; a Greenwich Village associate of Karen Dalton and Sandy Bull and 'music director' for maverick psychologist Timothy Leary, in the late 60s he studied Indian raga under Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Kahn, a commitment given powerful expression on his early Vanguard albums Rainy Day Raga and Second Poem. In the intervening decades, Walker has immersed himself in contemplation and analysis of flamenco, blissfully unaware that a generation of new players including Jack Rose, Ben Chasny (Six Organs of Admittance) and James Blackshaw had assumed his Vanguard releases as a touchstone to rank alongside the work of John Fahey or Robbie Basho. This influence paved the way for Walker's 'rediscovery' by American folk label Tompkins Square, and for a string of exciting new releases that commenced with A Raga for Peter Walker, four original compositions bookending tributes by admirers including Rose, Blackshaw, Steffen Basho-Junghans and Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore.

NANCY ELIZABETH
Critically acclaimed Lancashire singer-songwriter Nancy Elizabeth brings a refreshingly Northern turn of phrase to her debut album, Battle and Victory realeased by The Leaf Label. Nancy Elizabeth's down-to-earth songs are brought to life by her warm and unaffected voice, that turns the retro, less-is-more aesthetic of the current acoustic revival on its head. On her debut album Nancy displays such examples of instrumental exotica as Thai khim, Indian harmonium, Appalachian dulcimer and bouzouki however a prominent feature is a 22-string Celtic harp which has since become the cornerstone of her live performance. Nancy guests on James Yorkston's recent single 'Tortoise Regrets Hare' on Domino Records and is currently recording her second album to be released on The Leaf Label in Spring 2009.

BRETHREN OF THE FREE SPIRIT
Brethren of the Free Spirit is guitarist/composer James Blackshaw and lutenist/composer Jozef van Wissem. Named after a cult of 13th-century Northern European religious heretics (they’re detailed in Greil Marcus’s Lipstick Traces), this duo play with an appropriately zealous intensity. Their first album 'All things are from Him, through Him and in Him' was released on Belgian imprint Audiomer and their second CD/LP 'The Wolf Also Shall Dwell With The Lamb' was released in November 2008 on Important Records.

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