Leveret

Leveret Will Lift Your Soul With Squeezeboxes : NPR

~ Michael Stevenson ~ Leave a comment

In the close-knit world of English folk music, Leveret boasts an impressive pedigree. The trio’s Andy Cutting is renowned for his mastery of the melodeon, a type of accordion with a push-pull mechanism for intonation that imbues it with a wheezy kick.

The band’s fiddler is Sam Sweeney, of the flamboyant nu-folk band Bellowhead, and its concertina player is Rob Harbron — both are deft and expressive musicians in their own right. (The concertina is yet another variety of squeezebox, a small hexagonal specimen with a pure, invigorating honk.)

Within its respective milieu, Leveret might be considered a supergroup were the term not anathema to the band’s entire ethos: introspective, understated, minimalist.That’s not to say that Leveret’s music lacks spunk [ . . . ]

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Interview: Leveret on their new CD Inventions and English folk music

~ Michael Stevenson ~ Leave a comment

Leveret (an old name for a young hare) got together in 2014. They comprise former Bellowhead fiddler Sam Sweeney, English concertina player Rob Harbron and accordionist Andy Cutting – three of the very best on the scene. Their tune sources range from the 17th-century songbook Playford’s Dancing Master, to the magisterial, semi-pagan “Abbots Bromley Horn Dance”, first documented in August 1226, but probably much older, while their latest album Inventions features all original tunes.Theirs is a rich, sinewy immersion into the roots of English instrumental folk, guided by a mutual sense of exploration, space and a very English kind of swing. It’s an intimate, contemporary reinvention of the source material, each member weaving fluently in and out of focus as soloist.
TIM CUMMING: What makes Leveret so distinctive?
ROB HARBRON: The interplay, the handing stuff over to the other player. We’ve [ . . . ]

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