Rowan Rheingans
English folk musician, songwriter and vocalist
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Rowan Rheingans is an English folk vocalist, musician and songwriter who plays the fiddle and banjo. She is a member of the folk vocal harmony trio Lady Maisery, the Anglo-Scottish music project Songs of Separation, and of the duo The Rheingans Sisters (with her sister Anna). She has won two BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards: for the Best Original Track Mackerel in 2016 and for Best Album in 2017.
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Songs of Separation
The Rheingans Sisters
Rowan Rheingans | |
|---|---|
Rheingans performing at Costa del Folk, Portugal in 2015 | |
| Background information | |
| Born | Grindleford, Derbyshire, England |
| Instruments | Fiddle, banjo, vocals |
| Member of | Lady Maisery Songs of Separation The Rheingans Sisters |
Biography
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Rheingans grew up in the village of Grindleford, in Derbyshire's Peak District.[1][2] Her father worked as a violin-maker and invented the bansitar instrument, while her mother ran a Saturday morning clogging club for children and organised the Eyam Folk Festival in the Derbyshire Dales.[2] Rheingans studied traditional fiddle playing in Sweden and Norway.[2] She lives in Sheffield in South Yorkshire, England.[1]
Rheingans was a member of the Anglo-Scottish music project Songs of Separation of ten female folk musicians, and is a member of the folk vocal harmony trio Lady Maisery with Hazel Askew (vocals, melodeon, concertina, harp, bells) and Hannah James (vocals, piano accordion, clogs, foot percussion).[3][4] With Songs of Separation, Rheingans won Best Album at the 2017 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards.[5] With Lady Maisery, Rheingans joined with English musicians O’Hooley & Tidow to perform in the folk supergroup Coven.[6]
Rheingans and her sister Anna perform as the duo The Rheingans Sisters.[4] They sing in both English and French and draw inspiration from the traditional folk music of Britain, France, Scandinavia and America.[3] On their album Already Home,[7] The Rheingan Sisters performed "Adieu Privas/Bourée," a song learned from the field recordings of the Limousin singer and fiddle player Léon Peyrat.[3] In 2019, The Rheingans Sisters were nominated for the best duo/band award at the 2019 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards.[8] They self-released the album Start Close In, in September 2024,[9] which was named folk album of the month by The Guardian newspaper[10] and was listed as number 2 in the paper's top folk albums of the year in December 2024.[11]
In 2019, Rheingans debuted a one woman musical theatre show called Dispatches on the Red Dress,[12] which was developed with Liam Hurley.[13] The show explored her German grandmother's youth in 1940s Nazi Germany,[14][15] with the red dress of the title made for her grandmother to wear at the end of World War II.[16] The show won an Edinburgh Fringe First Award.[8][17] Rheingans also released a solo album based on the show in 2019, titled The Lines We Draw Together,[18] with funding from the PRS Foundation's Women Make Music programme[19] and the Arts Council England.[16][20]
Rheingans received a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Artists in 2021.[13]