Charlie Cawood


Charles Dennis Cawood is an English multi-instrumental musician, composer and music journalist, known for his cross-disciplinary musical skills as well as his work with a wide variety of projects and artists.
An active member of Kyros, Lost Crowns, Knifeworld, Mediaeval Baebes, My Tricksy Spirit, Join the Din and Tonochrome, Cawood has worked in art rock, pop, folk and early music as well as Indian, Chinese and Balinese music and a variety of other forms. He has also released two solo albums of ensemble instrumental music.. He played on Lucid, the 2014 solo album by The Fierce and the Dead guitarist Matt Stevens.

Biography

Background and influences

Charles Dennis Cawood is a native Londoner who began playing guitar at the age of eleven and developed an interest in experimental rock music. He was educated at Loxford School of Science and Technology.
While still a teenager, Cawood became interested in the music of other cultures. Learning flamenco guitar at Escuela de Baile, he also branched out into studying the music of India, China and Bali via the Asian Music Circuit, learning the sitar under Mehboob Nadeem and the Chinese pipa lute under Cheng Yu.
Cawood graduated from both the Guitar Institute and the London Centre of Contemporary Music, gaining a Bachelor's degree in Popular Music Performance and Production. He went on to gain a Master's degree in Music Performance at SOAS, specialising in composition and in the music of East Asia and Southeast Asia).
Having continued to broaden his performance skills, Cawood currently plays around twenty different instruments. He regularly performs on guitar, bass guitar, sitar, zither, cuatro, cittern, hurdy-gurdy, lyre and lap harp as well as occasional keyboards, gamelan instruments and the taishōgoto. Cawood also specialises in a variety of lutes – the Greek bouzouki and tzouras; the Arabian oud; the Turkish cümbüş and bağlama ; the Chinese pipa, liuqin and ruan ; the Japanese shamisen and the European lute.
Cawood should not be confused with the other London-based musician called Charlie Cawood.

Career

Early work

Even before graduation, Cawood was heavily involved in both London's live music scene and in touring music. By the age of seventeen, he'd become a professional musician. In 2006, at the age of eighteen, he toured as a backup guitarist for Icelandic alt-folk singer Hafdis Huld, during which time he also made his debut radio broadcast on Gideon Coe's BBC 6 Music show. Between the ages of nineteen and twenty-one, Cawood played guitar and bass guitar in Achilla, a Gothic progressive metal band which got strong reviews from Metal Hammer for their eponymous debut EP.

Main work as band member

Cawood is currently the principal backing instrumentalist and co-arranger for Mediaeval Baebes. As of 2020, he has performed a similar role for the Anchoress.
As an art-rock/progressive rock band member, Cawood is the bass guitarist for Kyros and Lost Crowns, and the guitarist for art-pop group Tonochrome. Cawood has also contributed guitar/bass guitar/bağlama to "noir art-deco pop" project Spiritwo, was the bass guitarist in Knifeworld, and has covered for guitarist Keith Moline in Kev Hopper's "micro-riffing" art-rock quartet Prescott. He has worked with goth/post-punk/industrial pop band Neurotic Mass Movement and previously played guitar for the Frank Zappa cover band Spiders of Destiny.
Outside of the rock world, Cawood plays bass guitar, electric guitar, sitar and tzouras for the "electronic gamelan" group My Tricksy Spirit. and both electric and acoustic bass for London nu-jazz band Join the Din. He sometimes plays chamber folk with fellow Mediaeval Baebe Sophie Ramsay and currently performs hammer dulcimer with occasional sea shanty band Admirals Hard.

Classical and world music work

As a classical musician, Cawood is best known for having performed the pipa part for the UK premiere of Philip Glass' chamber opera Sound of a Voice but has also worked with the Chamber Music Company and the Temujin Ensemble.
Cawood is also a noted player on the London world music scene. He has performed Chinese music with Yin Yang Collective, Central Asian music with Uzbek singer Alla Seydalieva, and Turkish/Romani music with Opaz Ensemble. He was also part of the Anatolian folk-fusion group which later launched the career of Olcay Bayir. As a gamelan musician, he's worked with LSO Community Gamelan Group and Lila Cita.

Work as project leader and composer

In addition to his work as a supporting player, Cawood composes his own instrumental music. He has stated that although his music refers to and is influenced by avant-garde music, he doesn't aim to be avant-garde himself, preferring to produce "accessible" music. His debut solo album, The Divine Abstract was released on the Bad Elephant Music label on 3 November 2017. Blending multiple aspects and influences from Cawood's career to date, the album featured twenty-one musicians drawn from his varied other bands and projects, including Mediaeval Baebes, Tonochrome, Knifeworld and assorted musicians associated with his SOAS alma mater. The Divine Abstract also featured forty-two different instruments drawn from European, Chinese, Indian and Middle Eastern traditions – various guitars and lutes; assorted keyboards, woodwinds, reeds, brass and strings; erhu, sitar, pipa, and a variety of percussion instruments from tuned Western orchestral to gamelan. The Divine Abstract received rave reviews, mostly from progressive rock magazines and websites.
Cawood's second solo album, Blurring into Motion, was released in 2019. Featuring a more Western-orientated instrumental palette, it featured two writing-and-performance collaborations with iamthemorning singer Marjana Semkina of as a guest vocalist on two tracks, and a mostly new sixteen-strong cast of supporting musicians including percussionist Beibei Wang, London Myriad Ensemble flautist Julie Groves, VÄLVĒ harpist Elen Evans, cellist Maddie Cutter and fellow composer-instrumentalists Maria Moraru and Thomas Stone. As was the case with its predecessor, the album was well received by reviewers.

Teaching and journalism

Cawood also works as an educator and writer. He teaches at the part-time guitar courses at the London Centre of Contemporary Music and at All About the Band. He is a contributing writer for the folk and world music magazine Songlines. As an acknowledged sufferer from depression, he's written about the topic and its specific impact on musicians in an article written for Echoes and Dust.

Personal life

In 2023 Cawood came out as a non-binary man and since adopted he/they pronouns.

Discography

as project leader

  • The Divine Abstract
  • ''Blurring into Motion''

as group member

with Achilla

  • Arashi EP - listed as songwriter only

with Knifeworld

  • Clairvoyant Fortnight EP
  • "Don't Land on Me" single
  • The Unravelling
  • Home of the Newly Departed
  • ''Bottled Out of Eden''

with Tonochrome

  • Tonochrome EP
  • Interference EP
  • "Not Gonna End Well" single
  • ''A Map in Fragments''

with Spiritwo

  • Primitive Twinship
  • "Mesumamim" single

with My Tricksy Spirit

  • ''My Tricksy Spirit''

with Lost Crowns

  • ''Every Night Something Happens''

with Join the Din

  • Elephants in Autumn Rage
  • ''?Change!''

as contributing musician

with Sinah

  • Sinah - sitar and pipa on 'Loveless'
  • Roads - bouzouki on 'Roads Two'

with [Mediaeval Baebes]

  • Live at Berkeley Castle DVD - acoustic guitar, bağlama, daruan, oud, cuatro, bouzouki, percussion
  • A Pocketful of Posies - bağlama, pipa, daruan, liuqin, dulcimer, zither, lyre, harp, hurdy gurdy, acoustic guitar, acoustic bass
  • Prayers of the Rosary - zither, lyre, harp, hammered dulcimer, pipa, daruan, guzheng, oud, bağlama, bouzouki
  • MydWynter - lyre, zither, harp, cuatro, guzheng, daruan, liuqin, hammered dulcimer

with I Heard from Lavinia

  • "Different Kinds of Winter" single - bass guitar
  • This Room Has No Doors - bass guitar

with The Anchoress

  • "Small Black Flowers That Grow in the Sky" single - acoustic & electric guitars, harp, bass guitar
  • "Wicked Game single - acoustic & electric guitars, harp, bass guitar
  • "Enjoy the Silence" single - acoustic guitar, bass guitar & glockenspiel
  • "These Days" single - acoustic guitar
  • "The Tradition" single - acoustic & electric guitars, bass guitar, glockenspiel, harp
  • "Bizarre Love Triangle" single - electric guitar & bass guitar
  • "Friday I'm in Love " single - acoustic & electric guitars & bass guitar
  • Versions EP2 - electric guitar & bass guitar on 'Bizarre Love Triangle' & 'Friday I'm in Love'
  • Versions EP3 - guitar & bass guitar on 'This is Yesterday' & 'Martha's Harbour'; glockenspiel & harp on 'This is Yesterday'

other appearances

  • Karin Fransson: Private Behaviour - sitar on 'Serious', electric guitar on 'Move On'
  • Matt Stevens: Lucid - bass guitar on 'Oxymoron', 'Unsettled', and 'The Bridge'; pipa on 'The Other Side'
  • Olcay Bayir: Neva/Harmony - nylon-string classical guitar throughout
  • Nick Prol & The Proletarians: Loon Attic - guitar and bass guitar on 'Carvings on the Wall'
  • Lucie Treacher: Wunderkabinett EP - guitar and bass guitar on 'Cross Fire'
  • Matt Calvert: Typewritten - dulcimer on 'Mute Heart'
  • Sterbus: Real Estate/Fake Inverno - sitar on 'Maybe Baby' and 'Micro New Wave'; electric & 12-string guitars on 'Maybe Baby'
  • UPF: Planetary Overload - Part 1: Loss - zhongruan, pipa, liuqin and electric guitar on 'Cruel Times'; oud, bağlama, bouzouki, dulcimer, zither and bass guitar on 'Forgive Me My Son'
  • Marco Ragni: Oceans of Thought - sitar on 'Voice in the Dark'
  • Evan Carson: Ocipinski - zither, cuatro, bouzouki, oud, acoustic guitar, acoustic bass
  • Nick Marsh: Waltzing Bones - liuqin, dulcimer, zither
  • Chlöe Herington: Silent Reflux - bağlama, oud
  • The Witching Tale: The Witching Tale - credited performer, no specifics
  • Greta Aurora: Dying Venus EP - acoustic bass, dulcimer, zither, electric guitar & bass guitar on 'The Hourglass', 'Venus Without Furs' and 'My Apocalypse