Words of a Fiddler’s Daughter – rúnian An immersive and cinematic collection of folk-tone-poems woven between and around spontaneously created music.
The improv folk duo The Ciderhouse Rebellion – master accordionist Murray Grainger and ‘Paganini of the folk world’ fiddle player Adam Summerhayes – join with Adam’s daughter Jessie Summerhayes to form a trio – Words of a Fiddler’s Daughter – to present this new collection, rúnian – out on 25th September. Buy the CD and the book of poems HERE.
Jessie’s words are steeped in the same history and folklore that flows through the music of her father, inhabiting England’s protagonists and landscape with her fresh and timeless voice.
She is natural wordsmith who has been enveloped by music her entire life, at times even sleeping in her father’s violin case as a baby, was inspired by the duo, and presented her new poem ‘Young Water Eyes’, in the shy hope that it might be read by Adam over one of the their spontaneous creations. Instead, she was invited by her father and Murray to read her own words while they improvised as they heard her speak. This became the first of a new three way real-time collaboration: the subsequent recording was something wholly new, built upon the foundations of The Ciderhouse Rebellion’s previous work, but with the added intimacy and connection of the human voice.
As Jessie continued to produce meticulously researched poems, also drawing on the historical records and literary creations of the early-medieval period — The Magna Carta, the writings of The Venerable Bede, the Norse Sagas — it became clear that this body of evocative work should stand alone, and Words Of a Fiddler’s Daughter was born.