Voice, Fiddle
Hannah Read is a Scottish born, New York dwelling singer-songwriter, fiddle player and composer. Raised in Edinburgh and on The Isle of Eigg, Hannah started playing Scottish traditional music at the age of six. She studied in Paris before she moved to the US to attend Berklee College of Music in Boston. She has toured extensively across the US, Canada and Europe with Nu-Nordic band FRIBO, Laura Cortese, Oh My Darling and The David Mayfield Parade. Hannah has performed with Mark O’Connor, Darol Anger, Emily Smith, Sarah Jarosz, Alex Winston, Juno award winning Rose Cousins and Grammy nominated Della Mae. Her performances include appearances at the opening the of the Scottish Parliament, Vancouver Folk Festival, Cambridge Folk Festival and SXSW Festival in Texas.
She performs regularly with her own band and with her all-female trio T.H.E.M. She also performs with New York based Oli Rockberger and Irish indie band Building Pictures. Hannah has opened for the Avett Brothers and the Deadly Gentlemen and has recorded with Folk Arts Quartet, Maeve Gilchrist, Hanneke Cassel, and Silvina Moreno.
She released her critically acclaimed debut album Wrapped In Lace in 2012 and Covers EP in 2013. Currently, Hannah directs a summer fiddle camp in California and coordinates the music for NYC Tartan Week.
Sound clips: hannahread.com/listen
EP Review
Long-time readers may recall that Hannah Read first came to our attention as a founding member of chamberfolk experimentalists the Folk Arts Quartet; since then, the Berklee-trained, Scottish-bred singer and fiddler has mostly appeared on our radar via her work with other Berklee alums and attendees who trend towards bluegrass and old-timey work. But her newest EP Wrapped In Lace represents a major shift towards the dark, rich sonic landscapes of indie popfolk types Regina Spector, Ingrid Michaelson, Adele, and even Imogen Heap, with a generous helping of both the sparse folk experimentalism of UK darlings The Unthanks and smooth Diana Krall jazz in the mix to boot.
The result is quite beautiful, a pure, sweet voice floated on top of a thoroughly produced, potent hybridization of british folk, cool jazz, and chill coffeehouse sadcore that leaves us aching for more. Each song here is its own landscape, and every one is rich with nuance and beauty. The EP’s single cover – a take on a Richard Farina composition which helped bring fame and fortune to Sandy Denny, Pete Seeger, and others since its origin in the early days of the folk revival – is quite possibly the sparsest on the disc, without the pulsing beats that drive the other tracks, but it’s worth sharing, not hardly for its cavernous, crackling, tense atmosphere, and the thick harmonies and chords that pierce the heart.
Cover Lay Down Blog, Joshua Farber