NEW RELEASE! 
From the album “Tullochgorum - Joseph Haydn Scottish Songs” (BIS-2471SACD, released Jan 2020 from BIS Records). Sound sample courtesy of BIS Records. www.bis.se

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.

There have been numerous recordings and performances of Haydn's Scottish songs arrangements with the standard instrumentation: violin, voice(s), fortepiano/harpsichord/modern piano, and cello. Our ambition is to achieve the 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, instead of a classically-trained voice; and through the instrumentalists trained in historical performance practice and playing on period instruments. 

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.

The Poortith Cauld (teaser) Courtesy of BIS records

Masako Art, single-action pedal harp
James Graham, voice
Sabine Stoffer, violin
Pierre-Augustin Lay, cello
Edin Karamazov, guitar
playing Joseph Haydn's Scottish Songs