As Long as Songbirds Sing

Since meeting, literally on stage, at a late-night jam session in London’s West End, jazz and folk guitarist James Kitchman and vocalist Sylvia Schmidt have made it their mission to push, stretch and rethink Anglo-American folk songs from the Appalachian Mountains, that traditional English, Scottish and Irish music that had evolved in endlessly fascinating ways since encountering African-American culture. Their unique style, bound to infuriate traditionalists of any stripe, layers influences of jazz and chamber music onto their source material, a fearless approach greatly influenced by American composer John Jacob Niles. A pivotal figure in the American folk music revival of the 50s and 60s, Niles collected traditional songs from oral sources, giving them new life through an interpretation described by Schmidt as ‘sounding like a cross between Jeff Buckley and Nina Simone’ and by Bob Dylan, no less, as ‘eerie and illogical, terrifically intense – definitely a switched-on character, almost like a sorcerer.’ Their lack of reverence allows them to logically close the album by blending Bertolt Brecht’s love poem ‘Das Elfte Sonett’ into an adaptation of North Carolina folk love song ‘I’m Goin’ Away’. But perhaps the most convincing track here is a version of ‘Lowlands’, inspired by another quietly rebellious figure, Anne Briggs.