Chris Wood

Chris Wood is an English folk musician and composer from the United Kingdom. He plays fiddle, viola and guitar, and he also sings. His work draws on traditional English dance music, including Morris and other rituals and ceremonies, and his background includes English church music. His repertoire also includes French folk music and traditional Québecois material.

Collaborations and groups

He works for many years with button accordion and melodeon player Andy Cutting in the duo Wood & Cutting, which becomes one of the most influential acts on the British folk scene. Their live album Live at Sidmouth receives four stars from Q Magazine, which places the duo at the forefront of a new wave of British music acts.

Wood is also a member of Wood, Wilson & Carthy with Roger Wilson and Martin Carthy. With Wood & Cutting, piano accordionist Karen Tweed and guitarist Ian Carr, he forms the Two Duos Quartet, which records Half as happy as we. He also performs with the English Acoustic Collective alongside John Dipper on fiddle and Robert Harbron on concertinas.

Oysterband and other projects

One of his early recordings is bass and percussion on Jack’s Alive, the first album by Oysterband, then known as the Oyster Ceilidh Band. The verified group membership also places him with Oysterband, the English Acoustic Collective and The Imagined Village.

He sets up the English Acoustic Collective as an organisation in 1999 to connect the different strands of his teaching work, including summer schools based at Ruskin Mill near Nailsworth, Gloucestershire.

Writing, concerts and awards

His other projects include Listening to the River, a concert project combining recordings of dialect and oral history from around the River Medway with live music, and Glassblower, which is described as an industrial ballet.

At the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards 2006, he and storyteller Hugh Lupton win Best Original Song for “One in a Million”, a modern retelling of a traditional tale about a lost ring found in the stomach of a fish. In the same year he is nominated for Best Album for The Lark Descending, Best Traditional Track for “Lord Bateman”, and Folk Singer of the Year.