Nick Pynn is an electro-acoustic multi-instrumentalist and composer.
His early interests were in world folk and experimental music. In
his teens he taught himself guitar and fiddle and busked around
Germany and Holland.
His early work includes playing with various bands,
recording sessions (including rockabilly legend Ray Campi) and
TV commercials (Captain Birds Eye Fish Fingers and Chambourcy
Yoghurt!). In the mid-80s, he studied instrument making and built
the dulcimer and mandocello he still plays and records with now.
(For a full list of recording sessions : Click
Here).
Nick joined Steve Harley in 1990 on acoustic guitar
and fiddle, taking the lead guitar role in 1996. The 'Stripped
to the Bare Bones tour of 1998 with Nick accompanying Steve on
mandocello, dulcimer, acoustic guitar and violin was a resounding
success; a CD Stripped to the Bare Bones-Live and acoustic from
the Jazz Café, London was released, and the two-man show
received a 5 star review at the Edinburgh Festival.
Nick’s debut solo CD In
Mirrored Sky (1995) is a collection of autumnal pieces,
and features bass legend Herbie Flowers and Adrian Oxaal of ‘James’
on cello. Herbie introduced Nick to Richard Durrant, which led
to the joint album ‘Nick and Dick’ (1997).
Music from Windows
(1999) is, contrary to the title’s suggestion, an analogue
album with a hand painted cover design. Its theme is summer, with
melodies drifting from open windows in Brighton streets. George
Ricci plays soprano saxophone, and the album ends with four pieces
commissioned for the dance performance ‘Flood’.
These two solo albums were re-released in 2007
as a double package.
In 1999, Nick joined girl band B*Witched for a
tour of UK arenas and an appearance in New York for the Rosie
O’Donnell Show on American TV. One of the highlights of the
tour was Nick being hoisted high above the stage in a 'metal cage'
for a fiddle solo.
During 2000, Nick collaborated and performed live
with Mark Allen (Attacco Decente / Manos) as Continental Drift.
In the same year, ‘In Osnabruck’(from ‘In Mirrored
Sky’) was used in a BBC documentary entitled ‘Journeys
to the bottom of the Sea’, which has been repeated several
times. Nick also started playing with The God of Hell Fire, Arthur
Brown. In 2002, the band opened for Robert Plant’s ‘Dreamland’
tour and double-billed on tour with The Pretty Things. Nick adds
bass pedals to his electro-acoustic strings in all live performances.
In August 2001, Nick went to Edinburgh with The
Life and Death Orchestra for a Festival production of
poetry written by survivors of the Holocaust put to music. During
the second half of the month, he played fiddle with American Perrier-Award
winning comedian Rich Hall in his band Otis
Lee Crenshaw and The Black Liars for ten sell-out dates
at the Assembly Rooms. Nick also met ‘Queen of the funky
harmonium’ Jane Bom-Bane, and together they wrote and produced
Rotator, a CD of palindromic
(forwards and backwards) songs for 2002, and the Fringe show ‘Year
of the Palindrome’, again with a 'burning hot' review from
the Scotsman.
2003 started with a 40 date tour with Otis, gigs
with Arthur Brown and a solo show, 'Music
from Hotels Rooms, Forests and Submarines', at the Brighton
Festival in May. Nick took this to the Edinburgh Fringe. Using
wine glasses, playing cards and live sampling, in addition to
his various stringed instruments, his show received rave reviews
and an award nomination. He also guested on 'Jane Bom-Bane's Greatest
Hats' at the same venue.
In May 2004 Nick's third, and long awaited, solo
album Afterplanesman was
released. More live shows followed (See News
& Live Dates for regular updates).
At the Edinburgh Festival Nick won a 'Spirit of
the Fringe Award 2005' for music.
The latter part of 2006 saw a very successful
two-man show tour of Germany, Norway, Michigan and Toronto with
Arthur Brown, and 2007 started with sellout shows at the Sydney
Opera House with The Lost and Found Orchestra in which Nick was
playing musical saw, bed bass, bellows organ, bottle bellows,
metallophone, traffic-cone berimbau and squonkaphone amongst other
instruments.
In May 2007 Nick won the 'Star of the Festival
Award' in Brighton, and was co-winner of the '3 Weeks Editor's
Award' with Jane Bom-Bane. In November he played solo shows in
Dubai & Abu Dhabi.
A 2008 re-release of Afterplanesman was featured
in the Sunday Times’ “100 best albums of 2008”.
A new album with Arthur Brown, The Voice of
Love was released in 2008. Nick’s solo show that year,
Driftnet was performed in both the Brighton and Edinburgh
Fringe festivals, as was 2009’s Colours
of the Night, heralding Nick’s fourth album of original
compositions. The Colours of the Night showcases pieces performed
by Nick with a small orchestra whose parts were recorded individually
in a small room above Bom-Bane’s, the café Nick co-runs
in Brighton with Jane Bom-Bane.
