A gig held at Bristol Folk House on Friday 8th June. The event starts at 19:30pm.
It’s been a heady 12 months for The Conservatoire Folk Ensemble. Their acclaimed studio album, Painted, racked up a string of jaw-dropping reviews, and the collective also guested on Fairport Convention’s acclaimed 50:50@50 album.
Meanwhile, in their hometown of Birmingham the full band stunned commuters at Britain’s busiest railway station with a pop-up gig, and they wowed audiences at one of the biggest St Patrick’s Day celebrations outside of Ireland - for the second consecutive year.
Now the stage-shaking 50-plus ensemble is heading out for their annual summer tour (which includes the fifth edition of their very own festival, Power Folk), and are set to release a remarkable new mini-album, Sleepy Maggie + Remixes Reworkings and Rarities.
A four-and-a-half-minute instrumental, lead track Sleepy Maggie perfectly encapsulates the ensemble’s richly layered and powerful sound. With sweeping strings, rolling percussion, tight brass, a fleeting guitar solo, and an unexpected Eastern vocal incursion, it’s a dramatic track, both muscular and delicate, oozing global influences.
Says band leader Joe Broughton: “Sleepy Maggie is a traditional tune which we’ve deconstructed and rearranged in typical ensemble fashion, pulling in ideas from various members of the ensemble to create something that sounds very very different from versions you might have heard before. The roots of the tune remain – which you can hear in the fiddles at the beginning – but the new arrangement heads off to some interesting and surprising places.
“It’s supposed to be deliciously over the top!”
The deconstruction continues with a series of surprising remixes and re-imaginings by various members of the ensemble that pushes Sleepy Maggiefurther into new musical territories.
“The idea of remixing the track is very much in keeping with the group’s approach to making music, of using what could be a straight-forward melody as the basis for a tune and seeing how that can be developed, or pushed, to create something that still acknowledges the original source, but is somehow transformed into something new and exciting,” explains Joe, adding the release took on a life of its own.
“This project started out as the single Sleepy Maggie, and after I mentioned the possibility of doing some remixes, in the pub after rehearsal one night, the ideas started flowing. Before I knew it I had club remixes, Chinese groove-monsters, full on drum’n’bass and more flowing into my inbox. I thought perhaps we could release a few of these with the single, but they just kept on coming.”
Entry requirements:
Meanwhile, in their hometown of Birmingham the full band stunned commuters at Britain’s busiest railway station with a pop-up gig, and they wowed audiences at one of the biggest St Patrick’s Day celebrations outside of Ireland - for the second consecutive year.
Now the stage-shaking 50-plus ensemble is heading out for their annual summer tour (which includes the fifth edition of their very own festival, Power Folk), and are set to release a remarkable new mini-album, Sleepy Maggie + Remixes Reworkings and Rarities.
A four-and-a-half-minute instrumental, lead track Sleepy Maggie perfectly encapsulates the ensemble’s richly layered and powerful sound. With sweeping strings, rolling percussion, tight brass, a fleeting guitar solo, and an unexpected Eastern vocal incursion, it’s a dramatic track, both muscular and delicate, oozing global influences.
Says band leader Joe Broughton: “Sleepy Maggie is a traditional tune which we’ve deconstructed and rearranged in typical ensemble fashion, pulling in ideas from various members of the ensemble to create something that sounds very very different from versions you might have heard before. The roots of the tune remain – which you can hear in the fiddles at the beginning – but the new arrangement heads off to some interesting and surprising places.
“It’s supposed to be deliciously over the top!”
The deconstruction continues with a series of surprising remixes and re-imaginings by various members of the ensemble that pushes Sleepy Maggiefurther into new musical territories.
“The idea of remixing the track is very much in keeping with the group’s approach to making music, of using what could be a straight-forward melody as the basis for a tune and seeing how that can be developed, or pushed, to create something that still acknowledges the original source, but is somehow transformed into something new and exciting,” explains Joe, adding the release took on a life of its own.
“This project started out as the single Sleepy Maggie, and after I mentioned the possibility of doing some remixes, in the pub after rehearsal one night, the ideas started flowing. Before I knew it I had club remixes, Chinese groove-monsters, full on drum’n’bass and more flowing into my inbox. I thought perhaps we could release a few of these with the single, but they just kept on coming.”
Entry requirements: