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In 2022, Gigspanner Big Band – made up of former Steeleye Span violinist Peter Knight, Bellowhead founder-member John Spiers, Hannah Martin and Phillip Henry of Edgelarks, percussionist Sacha Trochet and guitarist Roger Flack -announced Saltlines, a collaborative tour and double album with critically acclaimed writer Raynor Winn. Winn’s book, The Salt Path (which inspired the collaboration), was published in 2018 to critical acclaim and went on to become one of the most successful non-fiction books of the year…described in these pages as part memoir, part treatise on the English landscape, part travelogue. In his review of the project, Thomas Blake summed up this collaboration perfectly:
Saltlines is a massive, ambitious and highly unusual project; the fact that it feels perfectly judged at every moment is down to the sheer excellence of Gigspanner Big Band’s musicianship and the touching, clear-eyed nature of everything Winn writes or speaks. It is a constant delight.
The project has toured every year since, delighting audiences wherever they perform. In his review of their previous highly acclaimed album, Natural Invention (2020), Thomas Blake described the Gigspanner Big Band as a group of musicians intent on making some of the most important and exhilarating art ever to sit under the banner of folk music. With that in mind, they and their fans are no doubt craving new music and will welcome the news that they are to revisit their six-piece format to record a follow-up album. Next month (October 2024), they will head out on the road to preview new material that will feature on their as-yet-to-be-named album, which will be released in April 2025.
The album is available to pre-order at www.gigspanner.com/shop
Watch the tour trailer below, which features a brief excerpt from one of the Gigspanner Big Band’s new tracks, which is the outro of The Rolling of the Stones (to note: this isn’t the album version, and it was recorded just for this Tour trailer).
Gigspanner Big Band New Album Preview Tour
October 2024
18th Launceston/Town Hall
19th Honiton/ Beehive Arts Centre
20th Street/Strode Theatre
22nd Winchester/Theatre Royal
23rd Didcot/Cornerstone Arts Centre
24th Tewkesbury/Roses Theatre
25th Shrewsbury/Abbey
26th Southport/The Atkinson
27th Settle/Victoria Hall
29th Masham/Town Hall
30th Sheffield/Firth Hall
November
01 Kings Lynn/St Nicholas’ Chapel
02 Halesworth/The Cut
03 Hertford/St Andrew’s Church
Tickets: https://www.gigspanner.com/live
