About Bravura
Key Features
- College-trained classical violinist and violist, with decades of professional experience
- Equally at home with Bach for your ceremony and jigs and reels for your reception
- Plays standing and on the move – he can lead your guests in procession from the ceremony to the reception
- Entirely live – he plays solo with no backing tracks, so everything you hear is really being played
- Book him solo, or as a violin and cello duo, a violin and harp duo, a string trio, a string quartet or a bespoke chamber group
- Also plays pop, jazz, country, bluegrass and folk with a singer and guitarist, or with a three-, four- or five-piece band
- Can organise a ceilidh, barn dance or twmpath, with a live band and a caller
- Huge repertoire – classical, opera, film and television themes, musicals, pop, rock, jazz and country
- Traditional Welsh, Irish, Scottish and English folk music, plus bluegrass
- Welsh-language favourites including Ar Lan y Môr, Suo Gân and Men of Harlech
- Happy to learn a piece that matters to you, given reasonable notice
- Also performs on viola, baroque viola and tin whistle
- Composer and arranger – commissioned for museums, galleries, theatre and film
- Plays outdoors, with amplification where a venue needs it
- £10 million public liability insurance
- Covers South and West Wales, the Marches, Bristol and the West of England
Worked With
- BBC television
- The Wales Baroque Players
- Margam Orangery
- Oxwich Bay Hotel
- Oystermouth Castle, Mumbles
- Weobley Castle
- The Stone Barn, Cheltenham
- Arno’s Vale, Bristol
- Singleton Park, Swansea
- Love Trails Festival
Biography
Bravura is that rare thing: a college-trained classical violinist who is just as convincing playing a Scottish reel in a marquee as he is playing Bach in a church. He studied classical viola, twentieth-century composition and traditional fiddle – Welsh, Irish, Scottish and English, with bluegrass on the side – and has spent the decades since playing in just about every setting a musician can be asked to play in: concert halls and opera houses, churches and crematoriums, museums, art galleries, restaurants, woodland retreats and a great many gardens.
For weddings, that range is rather the point. He can play the Bridal March as you walk in, Pachelbel’s Canon as your guests take their seats, something quiet and lovely during the signing of the register, and then – because he plays standing up and on the move – lead the whole party out of the ceremony and down to the drinks reception on the fiddle. Couples tend to describe that last part as the moment their guests still talk about afterwards. From there he can carry on with anything from Vivaldi to Elvis to a set of jigs and reels. And when he plays solo it is all genuinely live: no backing tracks, just the violin and a musician who can read the room.
He does not only work alone. For a fuller sound he can bring a cellist or a harpist for a duo, or put together a string trio, a string quartet or a bespoke chamber group for larger or more formal occasions. Later in the day he can play with a singer and guitarist, or with his own three-, four- or five-piece band, and he can organise a full ceilidh, barn dance or twmpath with a live band and a caller – which is a very good way of getting three generations of one family onto the same dance floor. If you would like music that begins elegant and ends with everybody dancing, he can cover the whole day himself.
He is also a composer and arranger, commissioned to write music for museum exhibits, art galleries, theatre and film, and he would far rather learn a piece that means something to you than steer you towards his own list. He has appeared on a BBC television series, performed with the Wales Baroque Players, and played at venues including Margam Orangery, Oystermouth Castle, Weobley Castle, the Stone Barn in Cheltenham and Arno’s Vale in Bristol. He is based in South Wales and travels across Wales, the Marches, Bristol and the West of England.
