The Early Music Legend

         « on: December 24, 2011, 01:02:43 PM » A brief reference is made to DM... The clich? goes that in the early seventies a student at the Royal College of Music in London started to grow his hair long, wear flared trousers and go on to become the key creative force behind a classic progressive rock group. Where the story diverges for Richard Harvey and Brian Gulland is that the progressive rock group they formed was originally a folk group who occasionally performed pieces of early music on medi?val instruments. The debut album for Gryphon sees the group performing a series of folk songs with a couple of early music standards and two original compositions thrown in. Being a fan of both early music and English folk, it was therefore a bit of a surprise to me that I took so long to appreciate this album. The reason is that they don't sit in either world comfortably. Of their contemporaries, Steeleye Span performed popular folk be...

  ACKET... Rauschfeiffex... Shawn... Cornemuse . . . Hocket Hocket . . Crumhorn - what the hell are they? Some new kind of ice cream confection, or perhaps names or the conspirators against Hitler in the bomb plot?         No, they are all early music wind instruments.         Thanks to a number of musicians who have made them more and more popular in recent years, notably David Munrow and the medieval-style rock band, Gryphon, they have all been added to the repertoire of available sounds in pop in the past year or so.         It was hearing early music played by John Renbourn on his "Sir Johnalotof" album, and two recorded broadcasts by David Munrow, that turned Gryphon multi-instrumentalist Richard Harvey back on to his first instrument the recorder, and then on to all the rest of them.         "To get started on the recorder, you can use a tutor until you get the stage where you can think of a simpl...

yphon: Blowing through the Ages   R ACKET... Rauschfeiffex... Shawn... Cornemuse . . . Hocket Hocket . . Crumhorn - what the hell are they? Some new kind of ice cream confection, or perhaps names or the conspirators against Hitler in the bomb plot?         No, they are all early music wind instruments.         Thanks to a number of musicians who have made them more and more popular in recent years, notably David Munrow and the medieval-style rock band, Gryphon, they have all been added to the repertoire of available sounds in pop in the past year or so.         It was hearing early music played by John Renbourn on his "Sir Johnalotof" album, and two recorded broadcasts by David Munrow, that turned Gryphon multi-instrumentalist Richard Harvey back on to his first instrument the recorder, and then on to all the rest of them.         "To get started on the recorder, you can use a tutor until yo...