Gigspanner Big Band

Forbes Mutch reports on how musical magic lit up St Andrew's on 19 February 2023

I’m listening to The Gigspanner Big Band concert at St Andrew’s and a difficult hypothetical question comes to me from left of field.

In the days before digital downloads, when most people bought their music on vinyl, the record shops that I frequented would categorise their LPs into musical genres. I would always make for the record bins labelled rock, folk, blues and jazz. It made things easy.

As we listen to the six-piece band this evening, I can’t help wondering where I would find the records of Gigspanner in an old-fashioned music shop. It could easily be in any of the rock, folk, blues or jazz sections.

The Gigspanner Big Band is made up of former Steeleye Span violinist Peter Knight, Bellowhead founder-member John Spiers, Hannah Martin and Phillip Henry of Edgelarks, percussionist Sacha Trochet and guitarist Roger Flack. Together, they have created one of the most inventive sets of folk songs heard in recent times; a powerful and energetic mix of traditional English and Irish music, plus, as the Big Band name suggests, a strong influence from the world of jazz. Throw in a hint of blues harmonica, country slide guitar and Asian tom-tom percussion and you can see why I am perplexed, looking for the correct musical genre.

Jenny and I come across Peter Knight (pictured playing his violin) before the concert. We are locking up our bikes behind the church, when a bearded man in denim steps out of the St Andrew’s Centre. He is sipping from a beer glass and smoking a cigarette. ‘You’re with the band, aren’t you?,’ I ask. ‘I am with the band,’ he confirms. ‘You’re Peter Knight,’ I say. ‘I am Peter Knight… for my sins,’ he replies. ‘I’m writing a review of the concert tonight,’ I say, ‘so it had better be a good gig’. One of the most influential musicians on the British folk circuit in the last 40 years laughs and says: ‘Nah, it’s going to be rubbish, I’d go home now if I were you’. We all laugh, knowing it’s a joke.

And, sure enough, from the moment the band file onto the altar stage and gently start what eventually becomes their rousing opening number, the aptly named Awake, Awake, we know that Peter’s comment is a gross untruth. We can tell immediately that the synchronisation of Peter and Hannah’s violins, the timing of Roger and Philip’s guitars, the steady rhythm of Sacha’s percussion and the melodic background of John’s Melodeon is producing an intricate tapestry of sound that is bigger than the sum of its parts.

Gigspanner’s latest project, featured on the band’s current album Saltlines, is a collaboration with author Raynor Winn, following a theme of walking the Southwest Coast Path. Hannah Martin sings the wistful song Estren in Cornish, before the arrangement shifts into Three Knights – another Cornish dance tune that sees Sacha’s bass guitar introduced for the first time, taking the ensemble into a big and bold dramatic conclusion.

After mixing with the audience during the interval, selling CDs and merchandise, the band begin the second half where they left off in the first. By now, all six musicians are getting their share of the limelight, playing solos and improvising in the way that a jazz band would. It’s a fluid approach to traditional folk music, which often follows a strict structure of chords and lyrics.

After a sequence of songs that includes a mesmerising interplay of violins on Butterfly and the poignant Hard Times of Old England and a tom-tom solo from Sacha, the gig comes to a grand conclusion to rapturous applause. But they have not finished, of course, and are quickly back for an encore that is an extended medley of Irish and English dance tunes.

As we mix with the band afterwards, I still wonder what genre of music we have been listening to. Then, I think, does it really matter? Let’s just call it a blend of musical magic.

As always, thanks go to Chris Seward (pictured with the band) and his team of helpers for another excellent exhibition of cutting-edge music in Hertford. As Hannah Martin says after the concert, the welcome at St Andrew’s has been one of the best of the Big Band’s Spring Tour. 

Forbes Mutch

Find out more about Gigspanner Big Band

"With the Gigspanner Big Band, Peter Knight has assembled a group of musicians intent on making some of the most important and exhilarating art ever to sit under the banner of folk music." Folk Radio UK
www.gigspanner.com/gigspanner-big-band