Cultural Dessert

John Spiers and Jon Boden are two of the stars of the current young wave of English folk music - a fantastic duo and the foundations of the wonderful folk big band Bellowhead (reviewed here in October 2006 and July 2008). On Saturday we were at The Stables to see Spiers & Boden in 'Junctions' - a fascinating new collaboration with the classical chamber group, the Tacet Ensemble. Over the past few months, the Tacet players, Spiers & Boden and the composers Alison Kay and Ed Hughes have taken part in a series of 'collaboration days' resulting in four compositions (by Kay, Hughes, Spiers and Boden) for these combined folk and classical forces. These new works were performed on Saturday alongside traditional English folk music from Spiers & Boden and chamber works by contemporary English classical composers including Graham Fitkin, Michael Finnissy and Julian Anderson. It made for an interesting and varied evening though the comparisons between folk and classical sometimes seemed a little unfair: by their nature the traditional folk tunes were much more instantly accessible whereas the classical pieces, whilst not 'difficult' listening, probably needed to be heard several times to be fully appreciated. Nevertheless it was an enthralling evening with some wonderful performances: I think my pick of the new compositions was Jon Boden's arrangement of the traditional song 'Barbara Allen' which seemed most effectively to present something with clear folk origins as serious, thoughtful, contemporary music.