WELCOME

   

Welcome to the website for  BELLEVUE  RENDEZVOUS. Here you can  find festival, tour and concert updates,  as well as photos, reviews, and press and booking information. You can watch videos, check out the CD's, and join the mailing list. Please feel free to browse, and hopefully we'll see you at a gig sometime....

Have a listen:

{audio}Bellevue Rendezvous|Trip to Uppsala|uppsala-clip.mp3{/audio}

 

                                (photo by Kim Ayres)

 

    “Elemental, mesmeric, extraordinarily beautiful.” 

     Alex Monaghan  

 

    “Sheer musicality.” Songlines

 

Bellevue Rendezvous

are an inventive Scottish based trio of Gavin Marwick (fiddle), Cameron Robson (cittern, jaw harp) and Ruth Morris (nyckelharpa), plundering Europe for strange and interesting tunes. The nyckelharpa is a traditional Swedish instrument, a beautifully toned keyed fiddle in the viola register, rarely seen in the UK. With a collective CV that encompasses some of Scotland’s most fascinating outfits – including Unusual Suspects, Cantrip and Iron Horse – they draw on music and traditions as diverse as Serbia, Macedonia, Poland, Canada, France and Finland to create the quirkily alluring instrumental interplay that makes their Salamander CD one of the albums of the year.

 

2017 news - 

We're back! After being distracted for a while by Gav’s Journeyman show, we’ve been busy rehearsing material for our 3rd album. We have ten sets and we’re loving playing so many new things! We recorded it in the fantastic Castlesound Studio, and released it in June 2017. It’s called ‘While Rome Burns’..

It will be available on here soon, but in the meantime, it's available from Birnam CD, or all the other usual outlets.

You can listen to some of the tracks on soundcloud here:

https://soundcloud.com/gavin-marwick/smoke-and-mirrors-mozaik 

https://soundcloud.com/gavin-marwick/k-jota-da-gheada 

https://soundcloud.com/gavin-marwick/pirsta-onga-bucharesti

 

We’re now taking bookings for the promotional tour, UK and Europe wide, including festivals, across 2017/ 2018. We’re looking forward to catching up with old friends, making new ones, and all the fun to be had whilst touring! Contact Ruth (see contacts page) to book the band..

 

 

Some things the reviewers said about our previous albums (see reviews page for more), hope they like the new one as much!:

“Elemental, mesmeric, extraordinarily beautiful. The second CD from this string trio is an absolute triumph. Salamander is truly fabulous, cathartic and invigorating: very highly recommended and already likely to be in my 2010 top ten.” Alex Monaghan

“A lyrical collaboration.” **** Clive Davis, Sunday Times

“Salamander should cement the position of Bellevue Rendezvous as one of the foremost talents in traditional music, with a sound that stands out as truly distinct and imaginative.” Folkandroots.com, Mike Wilson.

“It’s not only their incredible musicianship but the way the instruments interplay to create atmosphere, the bowing of the cittern, the dark grainy effect of the nyckelharpa, the mysteries of the jaw harp. They also create interesting combinations and contrasts, placing darker tunes together with a livelier jig, formality with wild abandon, switching leads, new tunes, old tunes, dark and light together, it makes a fascinating listening experience.” Jill Turner, Gondwana Sound

“Sheer musicality.” Songlines

 

UPDATE:

It turns out that the reviewers do indeed like 'While Rome Burns', here's some snippets, full versions to be found on the reviews page:

The Herald ...Robson’s Piping the Fish, despite its slightly wacky origins, is hauntingly ceremonial and in typical Bellevue Rendezvous style, slips with apparent effortlessness into the traditional Source of the Spey, and the Galician pairing of K and Jota da Gheada underlines the fun, as well as doubtless considerable playing time, that goes into creating music of such high calibre... Rob Adams

The Scotsman Bellevue Rendezvous, the eclectically-minded trio of fiddler Gavin Marwick, nyckelharpa player Ruth Morris and Cameron Robson on cittern, continue their musical journeyman’s peregrinations around Europe, gleaning tunes and inspiration from Scandinavia to the Balkans and deploying them here with relish and finesse. Marwick’s sinuous fiddle, the dark, grainy-toned Swedish nyckelharpa and Robson’s ringing strings complement each other perfectly while melding into a tight unit, as exemplified by the shadowy, mid-European sinuosity of Marwick’s Smoke and Mirrors or the up-tempo Balkana of Robson’s Mozaik. In contrast, there’s the languid Scandinavian waltz, Vals etter Sigurd Aalmen and a deservedly prolonged deliberation on the beautiful Norwegian air Hvit Marsj. In the middle of it all, a Scots strathspey and reel sound crisply, surrounded by exotica, perhaps, but knowing exactly where they’re at. Jim Gilchrist

Northern Sky With their wide repertoire of European tunes and a uniquely attractive sound, Scottish trio Bellevue Rendezvous make a welcome return with this impressive third album... Liam Wilkinson

FolkWords ...The tracery of this music is spun through the interplay between fiddle, citern, guitar and nyckelharpa (traditional Swedish toned keyed fiddle) to create something that is distinct, different, and completely absorbing in its reach and compass...

Fatea ...Everything's played with an enviable panache, yet there's never any sense of parading technique and virtuosity for its own sake... David Kidman  

Living Tradition ..Bellevue Rendezvous' delicate arrangements have remarkable grace and serenity... Alex Monaghan 

fROOTS..the instrumentation, repertoire and gravitas of Bellevue Rendezvous invite inevitable comparisons with the Swedish group Vasen, and fans of the Swedish maestros should certainly give this a listen...

BBC Radio nan Gaidheal Just to let you know that we will be featuring Bellevue Rendezvous 'While Rome Burns' as album of the week on our daily Caithream Ciuil programme starting Monday 5th June. It's an intriguing, interesting and very musical album, a pleasure to listen to. John Murray