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Fred Thomas’ album The Beguilers weaves crafted song-writing into the narratives of poems by William Blake, Emily Brontë, William Shakespeare, James Joyce, Walter Savage Landor and Thomas Carew. Drawing on a wonderfully strange repository of musical influences – English folk, Joao Gilberto, Minimalism, the Aka Pigmies, The Beatles, and the English Madrigal School – Fred Thomas’ settings delicately bring the poets’ images and metaphors to life with finely wrought harmonies and luscious melodies. ‘The Beguilers’ features vocals from Ellie Rusbridge and instrumental contributions from Dave Shulman, Liam Byrne, and Malte Hage.

Buy ‘The Beguilers’ here

“A beautiful thing….The Beguilers is absolutely gorgeous” Guy Garvey, BBC Radio 6

“A beautiful, unique album that dazzlingly recasts these poems in new and unexpected ways” Resonance FM

“A beautiful, unique album that dazzlingly recasts these poems in new and unexpected ways” Nest Collective Hour, Resonance FM

“The Beguilers’ version of Blake’s ‘London’ is the finest setting of the poem that I know – the human ear adorned with manacles more beautiful than any earring” The Blake Society

“The Beguilers create a mellifluous, graceful sound that entirely justifies their band name. Rose has a touching, pure, sweet voice, well suited to the affecting melodies Thomas writes, and Shulman provides just the right amount of textural and tonal variety.The Beguilers plough a singularly rich furrow and clearly entranced an attentive Vortex audience” London Jazz News

“The Beguilers took William Blake’s poetry and wove a rich tapestry of intricate acoustic guitar and clarinet, over which Ellie Rose’s exquisite vocals were allowed to shine. Blake’s work was given new life with this simple but textured approach, which made these classic works come to life” The Liminal

“The Beguilers start with songs based on some of the greatest poetry in the English language, but it’s the combination of Ellie Rose’s haunting voice with Fred Thomas’s beautiful compositions that give this band its unique and unclassifiable quality – a treat equally for lovers of poetry, jazz, classical music and folksong” Peter Slavid (UK Jazz Radio)

© Phelan Burgoyne
© Phelan Burgoyne
© Alex Bonney

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Fred Thomas works regularly as Musical Director with Shakespeare’s Globe. He was MD for the Globe’s worldwide tour of ‘Two Gentlemen of Verona’ in 2016, as well as ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’, ‘Twelfth Night’ & ‘Titus Andronicus’. Other productions include the National Theatre’s “Pericles’ and the Globe’s ‘After Edward’. Fred has collaborated with, amongst others, Emma Rice, Michelle Terry, Nina Steiger, Nick Bagnall, Jude Christian and James Fortune.

“Launce is a particular delight, especially in her interactions with multi-instrumentalist Fred Thomas who she claims as her dog Crab” inthecheapseats.co.uk

 

 

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Bittersuite are a company exploring how to re-imagine the classical concert through the senses.

 

 

They have developed two original concerts – one for Debussy’s String Quartet in G and one for an original commission with composer, Tanya Auclair. At their core they are about collaboration, experimentation and playing with the senses as a way to enhance the experience of listening to music.


Their concerts to date have been one-to-one experiences. A performer blindfolds an audience member and leads them through a powerful sensory experience, in which gourmet tastes, bespoke scents, choreographed touch and movement have been carefully designed to enhance and lie in harmony with the music.

 

Bittersuite commissioned Fred Thomas to write a piece for String Quartet and Percussion in 2017 for their program “Tapestries”.

 

 

 

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Complex counterpoint – the combination of multiple independent melodies into a single harmonic texture – has been noticeably under-explored in jazz. This project explores improvised, spontaneous counterpoint, seeking inspiration from one of the richest resources in all of Western music history: Baroque polyphony.

Transplanting polyphonic schemes (derived from J.S. Bach) to the most classic jazz standards illuminates an un-trodden path to this fundamental songbook repertoire, one in which the culture of consecutive solos is wholly renounced. This quintet of team players synthesise polyphony and improvisation in their approach to the jazz tradition. Immersed in a liquid texture two hundred years older than the birth of jazz, these astonishingly malleable songs are heard afresh as intertwining melodies coalescing into a harmonious whole. 

 

Fred Thomas (ECM, Brian Eno) – double bass
Martin Speake (ECM, Paul Motian) – alto saxophone
Mick Foster (Cleo Lain, LPO) – baritone saxophone
Phil Stevenson (Fofoulah, Iness Mezel) – electric guitar
Phelan Burgoyne (Dave Holland, Kenny Wheeler) – drums

 

Album coming soon.