The Fungi Sessions: fiddler Hannah Read's tribute to her mycologist father

Hannah Read’s new album, The Fungi Sessions Vol. 1, is the product of a memorable partnership between science and music, writes Jim Gilchrist

From Flowers of Edinburgh to the Bluebell Polka, there is no shortage of Scots tunes celebrating our native flora. Fungus-inspired music, however, is somewhat thinner on the ground, but an album, The Fungi Sessions Vol. 1, just released by the California-based Scots fiddler, singer and composer Hannah Read, not only celebrates these ecologically vital lifeforms but is a warm tribute to her late father, Nick Read, an internationally renowned fungi specialist.

Nor do many album launches boast a panel of fungus experts, including the recording’s commissioner, Dr Edward Wallace of Edinburgh University’s Institute of Cell Biology, which took the stage recently at Edinburgh’s Summerhall. It proved, however, a memorable partnership between science and music, with Read and banjo player Michael Starkey performing against a video backdrop of delicately spreading traceries of fungus mycelia.

The Fungi Sessions follows other releases by Read, who plays American old-time style, including Way Out I’ll Wander and 2022’s acclaimed Cross the Rolling Water with Starkey, as well as the award-winning Songs of Separation collaboration. Her first fungus-related venture was in fact a track on Cross the Rolling Water, the Cajun-accented Waltz de la Funguy, which she wrote after her father had died following a long struggle with debilitating illness.

Hannah Read PIC: Samuel James Taylor

It would receive an unexpected response when she played it later at a concert, after which she was approached by Dr Wallace, also a fiddle player: “He was well aware of my Dad and he’d come across my music but hadn’t known the connection,” says Hannah. “Six months later he came back to me and said they had funding money from the Wellcome Trust and would I be up for writing an album of fungi-inspired music. I was like … what?”

The Fungi Sessions sees her joined once again by Starkey as well as by Nickel Creek bassist Jeff Picker. The tunes are interspersed with forest floor crackle, opening with the graceful melody of Silverphae over the steady measure of clawhammer banjo. Elsewhere, the unprepossessing sounding Stinkhorn emerges as a lively hoedown while Nick’s is a wistful waltz for her father.

Research has revealed just how vast the unseen mycorrhizal networks of fungi can be, making some of them the largest organisms on the planet. Nick Read, among other things, was a pioneer of microscopic time-lapse videos that show these networks growing. He also hosted warmly remembered mycological retreats, including to the Isle of Eigg, where Hannah spent much of her childhood and where she would later join an Anglo-Scottish all-women ensemble to record Songs of Separation.

She was profoundly moved as tributes poured in from across the world following Nick’s passing in 2020: “Also the response that has come from just from sharing a couple of tracks online has been overwhelming. Even now I’m connecting with scientists about doing stuff next year in America. The plan for this was to be able to take the music far and wide, playing it in botanical gardens, at mycology conferences, melding the music and science worlds.”

Nick was also a great music-lover. “It has felt so special to dig deeper into his world and explore the marriage of mycology and music.”

Hannah promises a Fungi Sessions Vol. 2, so the project seems to be steadily expanding and connecting, dare one say, like a fungus mycelium.

And there’s much fiddling of the non-fungal kind later this month as Edinburgh’s annual celebration of the art, the Scots Fiddle Festival, returns to The Pleasance from 17-19 November. It opens with a vengeance with How to Raise the Wind, a full-blown Scots-Nordic venture led by Norway-based Highland fiddler Sarah-Jane Summers and her guitarist husband, Juhani Silvola, with fiddlers Seonaid Aitken, Megan Henderson, viola player Katrina Lee, cellist Su-a Lee and double-bassist Rikard Toften Holst.

Other festival artists include the Welsh trio Vrï, the Shetland quintet Haltadans and last year’s Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year, Eryn Rae and her trio.

For more on Hannah Read and the Fungi Sessions Vol 1, see www.hannahread.com For details of this year’s Scots Fiddle Festival, see www.scotsfiddlefestival.com