root salad f18 4Square
It’s not just the policemen who are looking younger. Peter Palmer profiles some very youthful folkpersons.
Young Musician Of The Year as a percus- sion player, resulting in prestigious solo appearances in London and Bristol. Now at the Royal Northern College of Music, he drums for Seeräuberjenny and for Turkish folk musician Dogan Mehmet's The Deerhunters. As an accordeonist he has supported the Swedish band Dungen on tour in the UK.
Fiddler Nicola Lyons takes (of course)
the lion’s share of the vocals. She first per- formed overseas with the accordeonist Jamie Schofield, with whom she made two recordings. 4Square concerts feature her as a clog dancer with an astounding capac- ity for fiddling and dancing simultaneous- ly, not a hair out of place. In 2009 she helped The Demon Barbers win the 2009 BBC Radio 2 Folk Award for best live act. Mentors have included Gina le Faux, Fos- brooks – the Stockport folk education trust run by Liza Austin Strange – and the Folk- works Summer School in Durham.
W
hen 4Square ended a gig in the Nottingham Playhouse Playroom with Young And Old – Chris Wood’s adaptation of some verses by Charles Kingsley – it seemed an apt comment on the occasion. At the time I said that the average age of their listeners was twice the age of the band; actually three times may have been nearer the mark. Which goes to suggest two things; firstly, that 4Square are sufficiently respectful of tradition to attract an established audience for folk music and second, they do look exceedingly youthful, as they acknowledge by calling themselves “a young folk fusion band”.
But anybody thinking himself back at school when 4Square take to the platform is soon disabused of that notion. Not only do the quartet show real virtuosity on fid- dle, banjo, percussion, keyboards and other instruments including motor horn; as a group they are beautifully integrated and play with bags of authority.
Further enquiry elicits the reasons. 4Square have been performing together for four years, albeit between college studies. Their sound, they say, “was con- ceived in a freezing farmhouse on the out- skirts of Rochdale in the winter of 2006”.
They learnt lessons sharing stages with Richard Thompson, Joe Brown, Steve Win- wood and Seth Lakeman among others. Of their UK festival dates, the most successful so far has been an 80-minute set in Cro- predy at the invitation of Fairport Conven- tion when they sold every copy of their debut album 20.20 Manchester.
Last summer, 4Square traversed the European mainland from Denmark to Slo- vakia, collecting a colourful array of tradi- tional tunes on their way. In their present repertoire are airs and dances from Portu- gal, Bulgaria and Belgium, which they have the knack of fitting into extended instrumental suites.
Clearly the artistic control underlying their performances owes something to classical disciplines. Jim Molyneux, who plays mainly piano and piano-accordeon, and percussionist Daniel Day both went to the specialist Chetham’s School of Music. In 2008 Dan reached the percussion finals of the BBC Young Musician Of The Year competition. He has since opened a drum clinic with Russ Miller, the American ses- sion drummer, and is studying at the Royal College of Music.
Multi-instrumentalist Molyneux – he also acts as the band's chief spokesperson – made it to the televised final of BBC
O
James Meadows, the one with dread- locks, is the least vocal member of the band. A former student of woodwork at the Chip- pendale School of Furniture in Edinburgh, he prefers his hands to speak and sing for him. He played the violin from an early age before turning to the guitar family, and he’s now performing mainly on banjo or man- dola. At 16 he reached the semi-finals in the BBC Radio 2 Young Folk awards.
perating part-time means that 4Square can evolve without any pressure and keep their performances both tight and
fresh. How things will pan out when they finish their studies remains to be seen. But their collective talent deserves to be enjoyed by a wider public, not least because they combine sensitivity and imagination in a catholic repertoire. Les, the title piece of their second album ChronicLes, typifies their sense of humour, being about a favourite coconut that was, sadly, abducted from a pub. The band can conjure up a Vivaldi-like natural soundscape, as in April Snowfall, or strike up a hornpipe (Coridinio) with infectious panache. Their ballads have graphic immediacy.
There seems no limit to the horizons of 4Square. They surprised their Notting- ham audience with a song by Tennessee's Chet Atkins – after diffidently asking if we’d heard of the gent. Latin America is also within their musical purview. And their good-natured participation numbers have something for everyone. Beatrice invites you to be the voice of a pirate, while featuring a percussion duet which went down a storm in the Playroom.
www.4squaremusic.co.uk F
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