The Poker Club Band
James Graham, Voice
Sabine Stoffer, Violin
Pierre-Augustin Lay, Cello
Edin Karamazov, Romantic Guitar
Masako Art, Single-Action Pedal Harp
The Poker Club Band is an ensemble of early music
specialists and a traditional singer, focusing on the repertoire
from the time of the Enlightenment to the romanticism.
Our album "Tullochgorum - Haydn Scottish Songs" (released in
2020, BIS-2471)
has received many enthusiastic reviews and been played in many
radio programmes.
There have been
numerous recordings and performances of Haydn's Scottish songs
arrangements with the standard piano trio and classical
singers. However, many publications of Scottish traditional
repertoire around 1800 indeed suggest to be accompanied by
harp or fortepiano, often harp mentioned before piano. Our
ambition is to achieve the historical crossover that was
likely to be happening at the time the songs were published,
through the Gaelic singer James Graham, with his distinctively
'natural' Scottish timbre and intonation that embodies the
sentiment of the songs; and through the instrumentalists
trained in historical performance practice and playing on
period instruments. It is not only breathtakingly beautiful
music and interesting experiment in historical performance
practice, but also very entertaining.
The harp used in the project deserves a mention: it is a single-action pedal harp built in February 1809 at Erard's workshop in London; it was by chance shipped to Wood & Co., Edinburgh (the music shop Muir, Wood & Co. on Leith Street), almost certainly used in Edinburgh salon music scene at the time.