Chris Wood (folk musician)
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- For other people by this name, see Chris Wood.
Chris Wood is an English folk musician and composer who plays fiddle, viola and guitar, and sings. He is an ardent enthusiast for traditional English dance music (with a background in English church music), including Morris and other rituals and ceremonies, but his repertoire also includes much French folk music and traditional Québecois material. He has worked for many years in a duo with button accordion/melodeon player Andy Cutting: Wood & Cutting are one of the most influential acts on the British folk music scene. Q Magazine gave their "Live at Sidmouth" album four stars and put the duo "at the forefront of the latest wave of British music acts". One of his first recordings was playing bass and percussion on "Jack's Alive" (1980) the first album by the Oysterband (at that time called the Oyster Ceilidh Band).
Wood is also a member of the acclaimed Wood, Wilson & Carthy, with Roger Wilson and Martin Carthy. Wood & Cutting, together with piano accordionist Karen Tweed and guitarist Ian Carr, make up the Two Duos Quartet, who have made one album "Half as happy as we". With John Dipper on fiddle and Robert Harbron on concertinas, he is part of the English Acoustic Collective. This is also the name of an organisation which Wood set up in 1999 to link the many threads of his teaching activities, including summer schools based at Ruskin Mill near Nailsworth, Gloucestershire.
Other projects include "Listening to the River" (a concert project which interweaves recordings of dialect and oral history from the area around the River Medway with live music) and "Glassblower", described as "an industrial ballet".
At the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards 2006, the Best Original Song category was won by Chris Wood and storyteller Hugh Lupton for "One in a Million", a modern retelling of a widespread traditional tale in which a lost ring is rediscovered in the stomach of a fish. He was also nominated in three other categories: Best Album (for "The Lark Descending"), Best Traditional Track ("Lord Bateman"), and Folk Singer of the Year.
[edit] Discography
His recordings include:
- Ever Simpler (solo)
- Chris Wood & Andy Cutting - RUF Records RUFCD01
- Lisa (Wood & Cutting) - RUF Records RUFCD02
- Live at Sidmouth (Wood & Cutting) - RUF Records RUFCD03
- Lusignac (Wood & Cutting) - RUF Records RUFCD04
- Wood, Wilson, Carthy - RUF Records RUFCD05
- Crossing (with Jean-François Vrod) - RUF Records RUFCD06
- Half as happy as we (Two Duos Quartet) - RUF Records RUFCD07
- Knock John (Wood & Cutting) - RUF Records RUFCD08
- Ghosts (English Acoustic Collective) - RUF Records RUFCD09
- The Lark Descending (solo) - RUF Records RUFCD10
- The Imagined Village (various artists) (2007) - Real World
- Trespasser (solo) - RUF Records RUFCD11
[edit] Compositions
His compositions include: Coroare; Back at Lusignac; Elizabeth Clare; I feel a smile coming on; Lusignac; Mrs Saggs; The North Downs Way; The Shouter; Ville de Québec; Hard; Albion: Walk this World
He has written new words for the traditional song:
- Hares on the Mountain
He has written tunes for the following lyrics:
- The Burning Babe (poem by 16th-century Catholic mystic Robert Southwell)
- One in a Million (by Hugh Lupton)
- Bleary Winter (by Hugh Lupton)
