COOPER AND TOLLER EPK
Debut CD ‘A Number Of Work’ released March 2023
Debut CD ‘A Number of Work’ was released in March 2023. The CD received excellent reviews from, among others, Songlines magazine, FATEA and Folk London – quotes here. The title of the CD comes from a line in the song The Sheepstealer, always a Cooper and Toller favourite and one of the first songs we learned together. CD images, liner notes, etc are here.
Short Bio
Vicky Cooper and Richard Toller are a traditional folk duo based in the Bristol area. They sing solo and in harmony, sometimes unaccompanied and sometimes accompanied on a range of instruments including fiddle, mandolin, guitar and banjo. With a repertoire ranging from murder ballads to bawdy drinking songs, their material may be hundreds of years old but their approach is energetic, sophisticated and timeless.
Longer Bio
Long-time participants in the Bristol folk music and dance scenes, Vicky Cooper and Richard Toller joined forces in 2015 to form a duo to explore their shared passion for traditional English folk song. Both have backgrounds in performing and playing for dance and are active members of ceilidh bands in the South West. They sing solo and in close harmony, sometimes unaccompanied and sometimes accompanied on a range of instruments including fiddle, mandolin, guitar and banjo. On occasion a set may even include some clog dancing from Vicky. Neither Vicky nor Richard come from musical families, but they both discovered folk music early on. Here’s some brief background information.
Vicky learned the violin at school and later discovered folk music when she got involved in historical re-enactments. In the 1990s she formed a folk rock band with friends from South Wales and then joined Bristol’s Pigsty Morris and danced Cotswold Morris with them, also learning to play fiddle for dance. She subsequently joined clog and step-dance side City Clickers to pursue an interest in clog and percussive dance. Vicky has been a committee member of the National Youth Folk Troupe of England (NYFTE) and now acts as an advisor and clog dance teacher for NYFTE, as well as playing fiddle in a Bristol ceilidh band and working as a ceilidh caller.
Richard was fortunate to go to a secondary school with an active folk club. He joined up straight away (initially mistaking sword-dancing for sword-fighting) and that’s where a life-long love of folk music began. At university he ran the student folk club and organised ceilidhs where he called the dances and played in the band. Back in Bristol after somehow getting a degree in electronics he joined Rag Morris and danced mainly Cotswold morris dances with them for a few years. A few decades and ceilidh bands later he ended up as a director of Bristol Folk Festival which he resurrected with a couple of friends in 2019.
Tech spec
Download our tech spec here: cooper_and_toller_tech_spec.pdf
Contact
Contact Richard on 07879 825275, or by email at: info@cooperandtoller.com
Pics
Click on image for high-res version. Right-click, ‘Save image as…’ to download.
