Selwyn Music SYNMCD0011 

Engrained is the debut album from Bryony Griffith, Jim Boyle, Ross Grant, and Rosie Butler-Hall  – a collective of four fiddle players who all have firmly established reputations playing in ensembles, for dance, and as solo artists. All four also share  a commitment to music education and bring that spirit of sharing, collaboration and research to The English Fiddle Ensemble. 

The repertoire chosen for this first recorded outing includes well known session tunes. Traveller’s Joy, and an ‘unarranged jam’ on The Girl I Left Behind Me/ Rattling Bog serve to show how something new can be bought to even commonly played tunes. But the bulk of the album digs deeply into music which remains relatively unexplored – some sourced from original manuscripts, and others more readily available – for example in John Offord’s books John of the Green and Bonny Cumberland. All four players clearly enjoy exploring these sources (all credited in the CD notes) and have unearthed some gems. The beautiful Scant of Silver and the Peacock Hornpipe are two particular highlights. The album takes in many forms of dance music including jigs, 3/2 hornpipes and joaks – which (we learn from the notes) have an uneven number of bars in their two parts.  

The group have been playing together regularly since 2021 and this time has allowed for a strong sense of ensemble to develop. Each track was recorded as live, with minimal edits – leaving no room for slip ups. The band’s loose arrangements often include unison playing, where precise coordination of tuning and bowing patterns really matter, and it is spot on throughout. Elsewhere the melody is passed between players whilst the group provide a wide range of rhythmic accompaniment and interweaving harmony lines. From listening alone it is difficult to know who is playing what, but very clear that each player brings their own musical personality and style to the collective. The excellent recording effectively balances the ensemble sound whilst maintaining each individual musical voice – no mean feat with four instruments in the same register. 

It would be easy to pass over an instrumental album of English tunes, played on four fiddles, as one for the purists or academics, but this ensemble never loses sight of the fact that this is all music written to dance to, and their inventive and joyful approach shows how vibrant, alive and exciting these tunes remain when brought off the page. 

Available from theenglishfiddleensemble.bandcamp.com 

This review first appeared in the Feb/ Mar 2026 edition of Folk London Magazine