23 June at 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm
Join us in our community garden at the Harwich Arts & Heritage Centre.
The Seeds of Love – Music for a Magic Garden
British folk and early music, with songs of nature, love, fairies and spirits, interwoven with lively jigs and reels
Vivien Ellis – voice | Giles Lewin – fiddle & voice
Vivien Ellis and Giles Lewin first met as members of the acclaimed early music group The Dufay Collective. Versatile multi-instrumentalist Giles has an immaculate folk pedigree, working with folk luminaries Bellowhead, June Tabor and Maddy Prior. He is a founder member of The Carnival Band. Giles released solo albums The Armchair Orienteer and Time’s Chariot (2008, 2016, Park Records) ‘fabulous tunes, matched with inventive imaginative arrangements, which are throughout, impeccably played’ EDS review.
Grammy-nominated vocalist Vivien Ellis is known for her gutsy, passionate and folk-edged performances of early music with groups such as The Carnival Band and Sinfonye. She has also appeared in seasons with The Royal Shakespeare Company and Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, and her voice has been featured on radio, film, and TV.
As the ensemble Alva, Vivien and Giles enjoy creating welcoming, surprising, entertaining and well-researched performances of music, song and spoken-word for unexpected places.
REVIEWS
‘It is only occasionally that a concert transcends all human thought and aims directly for the heart…the most beautiful singing imaginable. Vivien Ellis sings from the heart and to the heart…with more than a resonance of the folk tradition projected with a harmonic edge capable of real emotion. She was sensitively supported by the fiddle playing of Giles Lewin.’ – Early Music Review
‘Lewin is an intuitively sympathetic accompanist on both early and modern instruments and Ellis has a simply beautiful voice… Both performers are obviously right at home with folk music and playing it because they love it, the mediaeval songs tug the heartstrings and they should count this record a great success.’ – fROOTS
‘Giles Lewin’s fiddle solos are delightful.’ – Gramophone
‘Vivien’s vocals are superb…she has many voices, arranged on a spectrum from the pure and unsullied through to the strident and reedy.’
– ABC Radio 24 Hours Magazine (Australia)
‘Alva have created amazing achievement and a wonderful listening experience bringing the medieval into the now.’ – Green Man Review