Gesine Bänfer (D): English guittar, flageolet, Northumbrian smallpipe, dulcimer, voice
Ian Harrison (GB/D): Northumbrian smallpipe, flageolet, cornett, harp, voice

Gesine Bänfer from Freiburg, Germany and Ian Harrison from Newcastle upon Tyne, England have established a formidable reputation in the international Early Music scene.  With their virtuosity and improvisatiory skills, their great interest in living musical traditions and their deep knowlege of the musical sources they have created new styles, 'set new standards' and 'redefined' their instruments.  They have won prizes at the Bruges Early Music Festival, the Rencontres de Maitre Sonneurs at St. Chartier and the Deutsche Popstiftung.  The international press have described their performances as 'electric', 'captivating', 'extatic' and 'unique'.

Alte Rätsellieder, Balladen über Lug und Trug und virtuose Instrumentalmusik der britischen Inseln.

Early & traditional music from Northumberland

Northumberland is England’s most northerly county, bordering Scotland, and the home to the only English bagpipe with a continous playing tradition.  Ian plays an 18th-century-style Northumbrian smallpipe made by Mike York and a Border pipe by Jonathan Swayne.  His unique and inspirational playing style combines elements from many world bagpiping traditions - including Northumbrian, Border and Highland Scots - with renaissance and baroque insights gained from his studies at the Royal Conservatory, The Hague and at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis (where he now teaches historical bagpipes).  His moving, virtousic interpretations of the old and traditional tunes of his native Northumberland fill his audiences with nostalgia and wanderlust. Gesine Bänfer accompanies him on this journey on the cittern, the flageolet and the Northumbrian smallpipe.

Great entertainment with bagpipes: in this musical conversation Gesine and Ian play bagpipes from all over Europe, including Galician Gaitas,  Northumbrian smallpipes and Scottish Highland pipes, they tell legends and stories about the bagpipe, and like the ballad-mongers of old they illustrate it with historical depictions of this legendary instrument.

Folks meets Jazz - inspired by one of the oldest English ballads Let no man steal your thyme, the quartet performs some of the most beautiful and virtuoso songs and tunes from Ian's native Northumberland and builds on the folk/rock/jazz grooves of the 1970s.

Gesine Bänfer - old English guitar, voice, whistle, Northumbrian smallpipe
Ian Harrison - Northumbrian smallpipe, harp, voice, cornett, whistle
Mike Schweizer - saxophones, bass clarinet
Florian Döling - double bass

Gesine Bänfer (D) - shawm, bombard, bagpipe, dulcimer, voice
Ian Harrison (GB) - shawm, bagpipe, harp, voice

Early music rediscovered

A guided tour of the loud and soft instruments of the Middle ages with Gesine Bänfer and Ian Harrison, presenting the instruments, the music and the stories behind them. The shawm and bombard were played by the waits, the town musicians who were paid to signal daybreak and nightfall, and to play for tournaments, processions and the 'magnificent banquets of the nobility'. On the bagpipe, they present music from the dance houses of the middle ages and renaissance. The soft instruments such as recorder, harp, dulcimer and fiddle were played in more intimate circumstances, in bath houses and in gardens, in small chambers and in noble bedrooms.