Rowan Rheingans

Rowan Rheingans
Rheingans performing at Costa del Folk, Portugal in 2015
Background information
Born
Grindleford, Derbyshire, England
InstrumentsFiddle, banjo, vocals
Member ofLady Maisery
Songs of Separation
The Rheingans Sisters

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.

Biography

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]

References

  1. ^ a b Kay, Peter (24 September 2021). "Concert preview: The Rheingans Sisters at the Greystones". The Star. Retrieved 15 February 2026.
  2. ^ a b c Chipping, Tim (22 July 2018). "Home & Away: The Rheingans Sisters". fRoots Magazine. Retrieved 15 February 2026.
  3. ^ a b c Winick, Stephen (8 March 2016). "Womenfolk: British Folk Music by Women". HuffPost. Archived from the original on 27 April 2024. Retrieved 15 February 2026.
  4. ^ a b Hutchinson, Charles (8 October 2018). "Lady Maisery launch live album at Thorganby Village Hall gig". York Press. Retrieved 15 February 2026.
  5. ^ "The Winners of the 2017 Folk Awards". BBC Music. Retrieved 15 February 2026.
  6. ^ "Lady Maisery and O'Hooley & Tidow in Scarborough: Theatre tickets, show details, cast, and more". What's On Stage. 30 August 2024. Retrieved 15 February 2026.
  7. ^ Blake, Thomas (3 November 2015). "The Rheingans Sisters - Already Home". KLOF Mag. Retrieved 15 February 2026.
  8. ^ a b "Rowan Rheingans". English Folk Expo. Retrieved 15 February 2026.
  9. ^ McNamara, Gavin (17 October 2024). "Rheingans Sisters - Start Close In, a review". Tradfolk. Retrieved 15 February 2026.
  10. ^ Rogers, Jude (20 September 2024). "The Rheingans Sisters: Start Close In review – a radical leap into darkness". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 15 February 2026.
  11. ^ Rogers, Jude (16 December 2024). "The 10 best folk albums of 2024". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 15 February 2026.
  12. ^ Gilchrist, Jim (21 August 2019). "Theatre review: Rowan Rheingans: Dispatches on the Red Dress, Scottish Storytelling Centre, Edinburgh". The Scotsman. Retrieved 15 February 2026.
  13. ^ a b "Dispatches on the Red Dress". Grand Junction Community, Arts & Culture. Retrieved 15 February 2026.
  14. ^ Armstrong, Julia (3 June 2019). "Sheffield Rowan Rheingans folk show tells story of girl growing up in Nazi Germany". The Star. Retrieved 15 February 2026.
  15. ^ Bolton, Gay (7 March 2022). "Award-winning Hope Valley musician Rowan Rheingans' first theatre show in Sheffield is inspired by her gran's true story". Derbyshire Times. Retrieved 15 February 2026.
  16. ^ a b May, Julian (7 November 2019). "Rowan Rheingans: "We need to learn not to be afraid to sit with some sorrow and grief. We need to make room to feel and have compassion"". Songlines. Retrieved 15 February 2026.
  17. ^ "Final Edinburgh Fringe First Award winners revealed". What's On Stage. 23 August 2019. Retrieved 15 February 2026.
  18. ^ Rogers, Jude (23 August 2019). "Rowan Rheingans: The Lines We Draw Together review – tracing extremism's slow creep". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 15 February 2026.
  19. ^ "Rowan Rheingans: Women Make Music". PRS for Music Foundation. Retrieved 15 February 2026.
  20. ^ Bills-Geddes, Gary (18 May 2019). "Folk star Rowan's at The Cube in Malvern, with a lesson from history". Worcester News. Retrieved 15 February 2026.
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