New songs and refreshing new music from the quirkiest of British acoustic bands
We are a five-piece acoustic band from Huddersfield, England. With two songwriters in the band, we specialise in new and original songs, carefully arranged for the extensive array of instruments and voices in the group.
What's the band about?
Our aim is to push the boundaries of the popular song format and to explore arranging and singing styles in a band full of multi-instrumentalists, improvisers and vocalists. If you've just arrived on this page, try listening to our songs.
What makes Nankivell's Optet unique?
Probably our mix of styles and extraordinary line-up. The music crosses so many genres it is unclassifiable. Influences drawn from our diverse musical backgrounds include blues, opera, country & western, jazz, punk rock, classical, singer-songwriter, free improvisation, pop, folk, contemporary post-modernist and world music. Between us we play piano, acoustic guitar, bassoon, viola, saxophones, flute, bass, percussion, kora, penny-whistle, djembe, mbira, kalimba, melodica and clarinet.
How did the band start?
Nankivell's Optet came into being in January 2001 when Hugh called
together a group of musicians to record 10 songs he'd written the year
before.
Some
of the musicians came from a group assembled for Operaville, a
docu-opera written with 7 families in Bradford as an interpretation of
their lives at the turn of the millennium. Hence the "Op" bit of "Optet".
Hugh had met Graham at a songwriting workshop in Huddersfield, and they
found that a fruitful creative partnership developed. With more new
songs arriving every week, it was decided that a smaller group should be
assembled to work regularly on developing the material. The most
intensive period of work as a band followed from mid 2001 to the spring
of 2003. During this period the band recorded 3 CDs and toured the north of England
with an additional trio of musicians from Opera North.
This tour included a set of small-group Optet songs and a set of the Operaville songs with guest artists Inder Goldfinger (tabla), Claire Williams (voice) and Judith Burgin (cello)
For more information about the songs, visit the Nankivell's Optet lyrics page.
What do our audiences say about us?
"heartfelt, lyrical and foot-stomping..."
"...expect the unexpected..."
"...original genre-bending music that amused, surprised and charmed the audience..."
"...kind of quirky literate transcendent wonderfulness music"
Where do we play?
For a list of gigs past and future, see Nankivell's Optet Gigs.
We can also provide songwriting workshops.
As you can see we are not a young handsome boy-band trying to make it big on the pop scene. Nor are we a bunch of grumpy old men that play in pubs... well, only sometimes. The age range spans three decades. We don't feature a lead singer - 3 different vocalists take different songs. We never play covers of other peoples' music - and we don't use a drumkit.
If you're not intrigued by this perhaps you won't need the information below:
Hugh Nankivell - songwriting, vocals, piano, acoustic guitar, viola, percussion
Graham Browning - songwriting, vocals, acoustic guitar, percussion
James Squire - saxophones, flute, clarinet, penny whistle, percussion
Michael Massey - bass guitar, acoustic guitar, percussion, vocals
Jim Pywell - bassoon, melodica, African instruments
For general news about the band, visit the Nankivell's Optet news page.
