Aces & Eights, Tufnell Park
Thursday 27th October
Doors 7:30pm, Live Music 8:15pm
Advance tickets £8
The Water Chorus is Ali Lawrenson (fiddle, accordion, concertina), Jack Saville (guitar, banjo, bouzouki) and Caitlin Chalmers (vocals, shruti box). Ali and Jack met at school in North London and immediately bonded over both a shared love of folk and the fact that no one let them choose the music at parties. When they met Glaswegian Caitlin (whose accent provided exactly the Celtic authenticity they were otherwise lacking) The Water Chorus was born. Now they spend a lot of time making music on a boat, and even more time arguing about who gets to play the shruti box.
Their repertoire is both wide and deep, ranging from Irish ballads to Swedish polskas via compositions of their own, and collecting songs anywhere from the Roud Index to their parent’s dusty CD shelves. Whatever they’re playing, their approach is rooted in the traditions of folk music that they grew up with – drawing a melodious line between past and present with the stories of normal people’s fantastical lives.
Ailsa Mainwaring and Nick Siepmann are a North London-based duo with a shared love of the human stories at the heart of folk singing. Through their open-hearted and finely honed musicianship, they invite audiences into the intimate conversation between past and present that can only be found in song. Ailsa and Nick draw on the living tradition of folk to bring you tales of fellowship, love and the joy of living.