Rowan and Anna Rheingans, The Rheingans Sisters, grew up in the Derbyshire (UK) town of Grindleford. The sisters lived in an environment surrounded by traditional music. They were encouraged to play the fiddle by their musician mother and violin-maker father.
Rowan is a renowned on the English folk scene as part of immensely popular trio Lady Maisery as well as for her work with Nancy Kerr & The Sweet Visitor Band, and the Songs of Separation supergroup together with Eliza Carthy and Karine Polwart.
Anna lives and works as a fiddle performer in Toulouse, France and is an expert in southern French folk music. She received a 1st class diploma from the Conservatoire de Toulouse.
Both sisters spent a considerable amount of time studying fiddle music in Sweden and Norway. The duo’s sound incorporates diverse influences from both northern and southern European fiddle traditions into their own compositions and arrangements.
The duo’s first album Glad Gold Hearts was released in June 2013 to critical acclaim in the British folk and world music press.
Their award-winning second album, Already Home, was made over just five days in a remote forest studio in mid-Wales. It was also well received by the British media.
In 2016, The Rheingans Sisters were awarded a 2016 BBC Radio 2 Folk Award for their original song ‘Mackerel.’
Their third album Bright Field was released on March 23, 2018. Anna said about the album: “Over the past year, we have found ourselves drawn to composing musical landscapes of light and dark. Like many, in both our happiest and most challenging times, we turn to music. What has become the central theme of Bright Field is how these experiences of joy and sadness, hope and despair, lightness and darkness are inherently and necessarily intertwined. But this is not an album of happy and sad music – instead we are trying to capture that cathartic, very human place where both exist at the same time.”
Rowan added: “For us, a song does not exist in it’s fullest form until people have listened to it, digested it and responded somehow, adding their own unique experiences to the meaning of a specific story. When we are careful to create open imaginative space around a song, then it can grow, both for us and for listeners, and that’s magic. We’ve tried to work as much as possible in this way while writing Bright Field – the whole album is an invitation for new stories to be told.”
In 2020, the duo released Receiver, a combination of experimental folk music and visual art project.
Discography:
Glad Gold Hearts (Rootbeat Records, 2013)
Already Home (Rootbeat Records, 2015)
Bright Field (Rootbeat Records, 2018)
Receiver (bendigedig, 2020)
Author: Angel Romero
Angel Romero y Ruiz has dedicated his life to musical exploration. His efforts included the creation of two online portals, worldmusiccentral.org and musicasdelmundo.com. In addition, Angel is the co-founder of the Transglobal World Music Chart, a panel of world music DJs and writers that celebrates global sounds. Furthermore, he delved into the record business, producing world music studio albums and compilations. His works have appeared on Alula Records, Ellipsis Arts, Indígena Records and Music of the World.