Brown Wardle Hill

David Chatton Barker & The Whitworth and Healey Vale Brass Band perform ‘Brown Wardle Hill’

With support from Sam McLoughlin

David spent several years exploring the windswept South Pennine moors surrounding Brown Wardle Hill, Lancashire, collecting the abundance of folklore, myths and legends found emanating from such a small aspect of the landscape. The lore and legends became bespoke arrangements written for the Whitworth and Healey Vale brass band, who rehearse close by to Brown Wardle Hill. In 2023 an LP featuring the recordings was released through Folklore Tapes which included an extensive booklet containing the research. The eleven compositions will be played live by six players from the band for the first time, with David reading aloud from the booklet featuring; naiad’s, vengeful witches, spectral rabbits, fell runners, Bronze Age burial mounds and what was once the most haunted house in the north.

David’s hand made 16mm film ‘ Under sky, over earth’ will be screened during the performance.

"The brass band bears witness to kings and queens, fairies and naiads, forests and fields; once again, the local avian populace bears witness to them.  The combination of brass and birdsong keeps the mood from dipping, transforming the album into a celebration of history in all of its facets, heroic and horrific.  Folklore Tapes presents the past as fascinating, relevant and new". (Richard Allen, A Closer Listen)

Sam McLoughlin will be performing harmonium improvisations following on in spirit from his 2023 LP Fae Transit, released through Folklore Tapes.

"The album is written entirely for harmonium, nylon guitar, hand percussion and dictaphone, with harmonium and finger-plucked guitar continually exchanging roles as melodic and chordal instruments. The interweaving dialogue between these instruments has a chamber-like intensity, though the music flows with simple, rustic tunes singing above any complexity. If you have ideas in your mind of what faerie sounds like, this probably isn’t it. The full-throated harmonium drones, triplet rhythms and meandering melodies are more McKenna’s machine elves than Tinker Bell. But it’s calm. An air of nostalgia and melancholy pervades the carnivalesque music, which is wistful, and occasionally menacing, but never violent”. (SoundOHM)