Peter Knight’s Gigspanner Big Band

A unique force in British folk music..

“The Gigspanner Big Band are amazing…they storm every stage they walk on” – Mike Harding.

“Peter Knight has assembled a group of musicians intent on making some of the most important and exhilarating art ever to sit under the banner of folk music” – FRUK.

The Gigspanner Big Band are a unique force in British folk music…

Their high-energy, virtuosic performances appeal equally to traditionalists and to those looking for something more experimental, and they have garnered praise from publications as varied as fRoots, The Telegraph and The Wire, where they were described as ‘melodically folk-rooted yet open and innovative beyond the constraints of genre’.

Beginning life as a trio formed by legendary Steeleye Span fiddle player Peter Knight – the line-up has been expanded to form the Gigspanner Big Band, with acclaimed multi-instrumental duo Edgelarks (Phillip Henry and Hannah Martin – BBC Folk Awards ‘Best Duo’) and Bellowhead co-founder and melodeon player extraordinaire, John Spiers, joining the fray.

As collaborations go, it doesn’t get much more mouth-watering than this.
While Peter Knight, as part of Steeleye Span’s classic 1970s lineup, helped invent a brand of folk-rock that is still influential today, John Spiers, has had an equally profound impact on the landscape of traditional music over the last two decades.

Characterised by riotous inventiveness, technically gifted individual playing and subtle collaborative interaction, this coming together of several of the biggest names on the folk-roots scene, combines a deep knowledge of roots traditions with a ceaselessly boundary-pushing approach.

Taking self-penned material along with music rooted in the British Isles and beyond, with the flick of a bow, a finely chosen chord or slip of a beat, they produce richly atmospheric arrangements layered within a wealth of subliminal musical influences “with notes seemingly plucked from the stars and rhythms from the equator” – Spiral Earth.

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