Klangkosmos NRW / The Rheingans Sisters (UK)

In the organizer's words:

INSEL
Klangkosmos NRW / The Rheingans Sisters (UK)
Floating sound at the INSEL
Thursday / September 17, 2026 / 7:30 pm (admission: 7 pm)
Admission: 13/5 (VVK incl. fees) and 15/5 (B.O.)

Urban British avant-garde folk duo from Sheffield

Rowan Rheingans // violin / banjo / tambourine / vocals
Anna Rheingans // violin / tambourine / vocals

Rowan Rheingans is an English folk singer, musician and songwriter who plays fiddle and banjo. Together with her sister Anna, she forms the duo "The Rheingans Sisters".
They grew up in the village of Grindleford in the Peak District of Derbyshire. Their father was a fiddle maker and invented the bansitar instrument, while their mother ran a Saturday morning clogging club for children and organized the Eyam Folk Festival in the Derbyshire Dales.
Rowan Rheingans studied traditional fiddle playing in Sweden and Norway. In addition to "The Rheingans Sisters", she is also a member of the folk group "Coven" (with the English musicians O'Hooley & Tidow) and plays in the folk vocal trio "Lady Maisery". She is a two-time winner of the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards and received the 2021 Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Artists. She lives in Sheffield in South Yorkshire, England.

Her sister Anna Rheingans is also an award-winning musician, composer, songwriter and textile designer. She plays violin, 5-string banjo, tambourine à cordes, flabuta and sings. Over the past 15 years, Anna has studied the musical traditions of Sweden, Norway and the South of France in depth. She loves to combine and explore the different musical traditions. She lives and works in the UK and France and regularly performs solo and with various projects in the UK and Europe.

Together, The Rheingans Sisters sing in English and French and draw inspiration from the traditional folk music of Britain, France, Scandinavia and America.
In 2019, they celebrated the premiere of the musical "Dispatches on the Red Dress", which they developed together with Liam Hurley. The show focuses on their German grandmother's youth in Nazi Germany in the 1940s. The red dress that gave the piece its title was made for her grandmother, who wore it at the end of the Second World War. The show won the Edinburgh Fringe First Award.
"The Rheingans Sisters were nominated for the BBC Radio2 Folk Awards for Best Duo/Best Band in 2019. In 2024, they released their fifth album "Start Close In", which was named Folk Album of the Month by The Guardian newspaper and voted the second best folk album of the year in December 2024. They are one of the most visionary acts on the British folk scene.

An event organized by Schwebeklang e.V. in cooperation with INSEL.

Price information:

Admission: 13/5 (VVK incl. fees) and 15/5 (B.O.)