Fran and Flora

19th April 2023

I first heard Fran & Flora on a BBC Morning After playlist (I think) some years ago. I liked it and thought I’d investigate further. I got really interested when I spotted that one of the tunes on their unfurl remix EP was mixed by Portico Quartet, the band I’ve seen more than any other. I made contact and we had a drawn out email conversation over many many months (as is often the case) before eventually finding a date that worked for us both.

As often happens I quickly flipped from a sense of  exhilaration that I’d managed to book a brilliant act, to one of panic.  Described as playing “modes and melodies of Klezmer, Transylvanian, Romanian, Greek and Armenian music, [with] deep dives into archival recordings and live electronics” would anyone else be as excited as me?!

Well I needn’t have worried. As so often recently the concert was sold out. Fran and Flora were a captivating pair, with big personalities, great stories (including life in a super cool Margate and bumping into artist, Tracey Emin) and their music was mesmerising.

We aren’t set up for their full range of electronic delights but after a first set of purely acoustic music, in the second half the loops and pedals were added. I loved both but each set had its fans.  Here are the set lists in full.

They were great company after the concern. It turns out that Fran (full and brilliant name Francesca Ter-Berg) has played strings on a number of Portico Quartet albums, including their most recent, Monument. Have a listen here, Fran is quite prominent on several tracks. They stayed at the barn, and Simon persuaded them both to go and run Woolford Wood parkrun on Saturday morning.

More fabulous food from Steve. And I actually remembered to get a photo before it was all consumed.

All in all another great night and some more lovely musicians to join our Ryepiece extended family.

Salt House

March 31st, 2023

Recorded, the music of Salt House is calm, mellow and relaxing. That sounds like faint praise but it’s not meant to be. Once you’ve heard them live a better, single word to describe their rich, balanced sound is healing. Simon even suggested they should be available on the NHS after their first 40 minute set on Friday.

Photo by Liz Redmayne. Taken after her inappropriate question about Blackpool Pleasure Beach.

Ewan MacPherson, Jenny Sturgeon and Lauren MacColl all write and arrange their beautiful songs and tunes, sometimes taking inspiration from the writings of Nan Shepherd, Thomas Campbell, Emily Dickinson or Danish folk stories, but always weaving them into wonderful arrangements that sound their own. All three members of the band are superb musicians but they are happy to let their own contributions join with the others to create a bigger whole. There is no ego in Salt House. All three introduce tunes and give just the right amount of background and origin story to help us all connect.

And extract of Fire Light from the 2020 album, Huam.

The blend of acoustic and lightly amplified instruments, with the three very different but perfectly matched voices created a lovely intimate sound which had the sell out crowd enraptured from the start of the first set to the end of the second.

CDs flew off the piano during the interval and at the end of the concert as so many people wanted to take a little bit of Salt House home with them.

The sets covered the whole Salt House career with a clutch of songs after the interval, from their latest album Riverwoods. Inspired by the project to replant the banks of Scottish Rivers to encourage the return of wild salmon, Headwater is featured in the Channel 5 documentary about the project, which you can still watch on catch up here.

We took our now traditional band photo in the kitchen with the hats before waving goodbye to them all as they headed back to their temporary base in Matlock before Saturday night’s concert in Belper.

This one is going to live long in the memories and the hearts of all those who were lucky enough to share it.