Events
** PLEASE NOTE: This show will take place at our alternative home for the evening: THE WATER RATS, 328 Grays Inn Road, Kings Cross, WC1X 8BZ. Doors open 7.30pm. Music starts 8.15pm. **
This virtuosic duo formed as the result of a chance meeting at a folk session in 2018, and led to WILL POUND & JENN BUTTERWORTH’s music travelling around the world as a viral internet sensation. In their live shows, they play a game of ‘musical cat and mouse’; improvising and responding to each other, weaving virtuosic performances that are unique and in-the-moment as only two musicians highly accomplished in their craft can produce.
Their debut album, recorded live in Glasgow in 2023, has received great praise: “Harmonica and melodeon ace Will Pound and guitarist Jenn Butterworth – well known for her work with the Kinnaris Quintet and much else – transfer their celebrated live duo to the studio and their opening blues-inflected reel set would raise the dead and make them dance, as harmonica squalls joyously alongside the intense skitter and slap of guitar. They ease back for two Irish jigs – well-known, well-worn but treated with gently rollicking affection, before Pound switches to diatonic melodeon for a couple of limber, self-composed bourrées. There’s a solitary song from Butterworth – Better Things, a vintage but sprightly anti-nuke protest by Peggy Seeger – followed by the Queen of Sheba, ushered in with reedy gusto. A thoughtfully poignant rendering of the retreat march Battle of the Somme precedes a return to the frenetic in the Beggarman set – not so much musical dialogue as mutual hot pursuit.” Jim Gilchrist, ***** The Scotsman
