Sue Harris


Sue Harris is an English musician classically trained as an oboeist, but best known for her folk music performances with the hammered dulcimer.

Biography

Harris is fluent in reading and writing music and switched from her original instrument, the oboe, to the dulcimer in the mid-1970s. In making that switch, she became one of the foremost performers on that folk instrument, though at the time it seemed just a matter of expediency. She was married to John Kirkpatrick, a prominent melodeon virtuoso in England, was pregnant with their first son, and found herself unable to maintain the breath control needed to play the oboe.
She performed on both instruments with the Albion Country Band on their debut album Battle of the Field, and also recorded and performed as one half of a duet with Kirkpatrick. Harris has also performed with Richard and Linda Thompson, and has been a composer for the BBC on various broadcast plays, as well as for live theatre. She is also a singer and has written music for choral groups.
More recently, in 2008 she was leader of the "Wild Angels Community Choir" in Welshpool, Powys, Wales.
Following the World Dulcimer Congress held in Malvern, Worcestershire in 2015, Harris formed the English Dulcimer Duo with Lisa Warburton. The duo has toured extensively, performing a repertoire of mainly English tunes, but also including a number of jaunty 18th-century melodies and Welsh tunes.

Discography

Solo albums

In 2009 Topic Records included in their 70-year anniversary boxed set Three Score and Ten The Rose Of Britain’s Isle / Glorishears from The Rose Of Britain’s Isle as track thirteen on the second CD.

Martin Wyndham-Read, Sue Harris and Martin Carthy