Susanna Borsch is one of the few instrumentalists able to interpret both contemporary and early music with complete ease. She studied at the Amsterdam Conservatorium with Walter van Hauwe. Her solo CDs “off-limits” (2006) and “Susie, tell me a Story!” (2014) feature many new works for recorder and live-electronics written especially for her. Her other ensembles include Mezzaluna (Renaissance polyphony in recorders); the band Hexnut; ELECTRA (all-female modern music ensemble); BRISK and Flautando Köln (Recorder Quartets). Dapper’s Delight provides Susanna with the space to explore improvisation, and a freer approach to performing, in a repertoire full of beautiful melodies and invigorating dances.
Since April 2014 she teaches at the Trossingen University of Music in Germany.
DAPPER’S DELIGHT
Historical Popular Music
DAPPER’S DELIGHT
Voices, Recorders and Concertinas
A musical instrument maker by calling, Adrian Brown has conducted extensive research into the history of the recorder, measuring many original instruments, making reconstructions and has written several organological studies. He has played the anglo concertina since his teenage years and teaches the instrument both privately and at the annual German Concertina Meeting.
Dapper’s Delight are back with their third album on Karnatic Lab Records. This new programme of popular songs and tunes from the ‘musical vernacular’ concerns the eternal themes of life, love and death. Studio fireworks borrowed from the pop world allow for more complex arrangements, and all the numbers are sung and played in Dapper’s Delight’s inimitable style of voices, recorders and concertinas. In addition to effortlessly virtuosic dance tunes and historical ballads, new versions of classic folk songs and incursions into the realm of the 19th century British Music Hall are a characterising element of the duo’s new repertoire.
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Since 2009, Dapper’s Delight has won friends and admirers with their programmes of historical popular music played on the unlikely but earthy combination of recorder and concertina. While examining, exploiting and celebrating the multifarious ties between folk and early music, they created a personal approach that began with their debut CD Indoors. In this new collection of exhilarating dances, sensitive airs and timeless songs, Dapper’s Delight delivers a virtuosic and soulful exploration of music that once entertained both princes and peasants alike.
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The recorder virtuoso Susanna Borsch, together with Adrian Brown on the anglo concertina take a new approach to music found along the historically ambiguous border between classic and folk music in 16th and 17th century England. As Dapper’s Delight, they present their enchanting arrangements of these timeless songs and invigorating melodies.
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The name “Dapper’s Delight” is a reference to the Dutch humanist and armchair explorer Olfert Dapper (ca. 1635 – 1689) who despite never having travelled outside Holland published several geographical tomes, amongst which Description of Africa (1668) is still a key text for Africanists. A famous Amsterdam street market is named after him and it was here that the duo first performed in 2009.
Mike Harding Show, Radio 2 (UK)
“Well, that was a sweet bit of playing there, I hope that has put a little spring in your step, that was Dapper’s Delight…” © Mike Harding
DAPPER’S DELIGHT
Historical Popular Music
