Rowan Rheingans is a fiddle player, banjoist and songwriter widely regarded as one of the foremost innovators in folk music today.
Best known for her work with acclaimed bands Lady Maisery, The Rheingans Sisters and Songs of Separation, Rowan has won two BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards and is a six-times nominee.
In what will prove to be a career-shifting year, Rowan premiered her new solo show Dispatches on the Red Dress in a two week run at the prestigious Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August. This Autumn, Rowan takes this ambitious and deeply personal one-woman show on a national tour.
An intimate and adventurous exploration of memory, identity, joy, sorrow, trauma-recovery, war and waltzes, Dispatches on the Red Dress tells the true story of Rowan's German grandmother's youth in 1940's Germany.
With genre-melding fluidity, Rowan weaves immersive storytelling around 10 new songs performed live with fiddle, banjo, guitar and subtly inventive use of pre-recorded sounds.
In the current time of deeply felt political tensions, with the rise of racism in our communities and a new nationalistic fervour gaining pace across Europe, Dispatches on the Red Dress is a highly resonant and much needed historic provocation for our current political and social climate.
Slowly revealing what is at once a warm family story and a troubling elegy on the modern human condition, Rowan explores how hope for the future may be found in the very darkest pockets of our history…
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As well as being a heartfelt yet unflinching anti-war and anti-fascist statement, the show is also an uplifting celebration of small acts of every-day resistance, speaking directly to the human capabilities of transformation and change. It is Rowan’s most courageous, most political and most personal work to date.
“For me, this is a show about horror and beauty. It is also about trauma recovery, birdsong, war and waltzes," she says.
"Hidden in the folds of my own grandmother’s story, there is a profound darkness alongside, I think, a deeply hopeful message about humanity’s capacity for transformation. It feels important, in our current social and political climate of half-truths and fake news, fueling a collective inertia that sometimes feels akin to a dangerous forgetting or mis-remembering of history, to share this story.
"I hope it will spur conversations about how we can resist the rise of the far right in constructive, supportive, creative ways. It is about the peace-making potential of telling different kinds of stories…"
Rowan’s debut solo album, The Lines We Draw Together, is a companion to the live show and was released in August.
See her live at The Stables on November 6. To book tickets click here
