The Rheingans Sisters make playful, powerful and richly connecting music that is wholly contemporary while deeply anchored in folk traditions. A unique and unmissable act on the folk and world music stage today, Rowan and Anna play a plethora of instruments in their live shows, many of them handmade by their luthier father Helmut Rheingans who is based in their native Peak District home.
Over the last five years, three critically acclaimed albums and a BBC Radio 2 Folk Award win for ‘Best Original Track’ in 2016, audiences across the UK, Europe and Australia have been utterly captivated by their very special live performances. Drawing on their pan-European musical scholarship and their spirited mission to make connections between the music of different geographical roots, they have developed a rich artistic approach to the deconstruction and reimagining of traditional music alongside their own beguiling compositions. Performing live, the sisters are inimitable; full-hearted performers and spontaneous, on-stage improvisors, with adventurous use of fiddles, voices, banjo, bansitar, tambourin à cordes, spoken word, dancing feet and percussion.
The Rheingans Sisters released their critically acclaimed fourth album Receiver in 2020 on the Bendigedig Label.
The award-winning multi-instrumentalists, composers and folk scholars were nominated for ‘Best Duo/Group’ at 2019 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards.
‘Scandi-noir, but tinged with joy and avant-garde trad’ Songlines
‘Brilliant complexity and sparkling diversity on show’ Folk Radio UK
‘Gorgeously seasonal’ Mark Radcliffe, BBC Radio 2 Folk Show
‘The Rheingans Sisters are unique; their songs and tunes are special, completely absorbing, alluring, simple yet totally complicated’ Folk Wales Online