Exciting news. Our Jane, Spiro’s main composer and arranger, has been included in ‘Folk Tunes from the Women – Over 150 contemporary tunes written by 100 female composers from Britain and Ireland’, a Faber publication, curated by Kathryn Tickell OBE, to celebrate International Women’s Day. This comes at a great time as Jane has been poorly these last 3 years, meaning we have had to take a break. She’s recovering well, so we will be back in force!

This spring sees the launch of a brand-new Spiro project. Spiro’s main composer, Jane Harbour, presents Tongue Like a Drum, a new composition, featuring Steve Reich’s Synergy Vocals (Micaela Haslam, Jo Goldmith-Eteson, Joanna Forbes L’Estrange and Kirsty Hopkins), Spiro and synth player Ruth Wall. This 8-piece, interlocking vocal, analogue-synth driven, genre-busting set delivers a raw, punk infused take on minimalism. Jane’s compositional vision runs with the superhumanity of Synergy’s voices, and one volcanically powerful but exquisitely intricate 8-armed and 4-lunged machine. Dates are:
18 April Cecil Sharp House, London
25 April The Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh
30 April St George’s, Bristol
6 May – St Barnabas Church, Oxford

Read Real World’s tribute to our dear friend and manager Alan James, seen here standing in on guitar. https://realworldrecords.com/news/remembering-alan-james/

We’re delighted to announce that we will be touring the USA for the first time in September. Thanks so much to Rob Simonds for making this happen!

We were delighted to return to Real World last month for one day to record the Copper Suite. We tracked live in the Big Room and managed to film everything as well. The suite, which lasts eight minutes, features elements of classic folk songs from the Copper Family collection.  It was written for the centenary celebration of Bob Copper’s life and work, at Cecil Sharp House in London on 24th January 2015. As the only instrumental group invited to take part in the event, we were very honoured to join the fabulous array of performers from the world of English folk music.

You can download or stream the track here, and watch us recording it live below.

“Largely at the instigation of Ian Anderson of fRoots magazine, The Copper Family decided to include Spiro as part of the Bob Copper centenary celebrations back in 2015. An inspired choice it was too because from it sprang ‘The Copper Suite’. There have been many interpretations of songs from the family repertoire, some good, some bad, and some which leave one asking, why? Fortunately Spiro’s piece is none of those… it excels!
What they have done is to take three songs from our family and successfully written them into a cohesive whole, despite their being, on paper at least, so radically different that they would not be considered natural bedfellows. At the centre lies ‘Lord Thomas’, certainly the most unusual ballad from the repertoire and one rarely sung (as it’s so darned difficult), and this is bookended by ‘Bold Fisherman’ and ‘Spencer the Rover’. What results is a piece of orchestral beauty which ably demonstrates the inherent loveliness of English folk tunes; in this Spiro follow in the exalted grained footsteps of Percy Grainger, Vaughan Williams, George Butterworth et al, yet through the use of traditional instruments retain the roots of the original without distracting the listener from the essential values at the core. We loved it! Highly recommended.” – Jon Dudley, Jill Copper and Coppers All