Bill Taylor

Find work on Temple Records featuring Bill Taylor

Bill Taylor is a specialist in the performance of ancient harp music from Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and is one of very few players investigating these repertoires on medieval gut-strung harps, wire-strung clarsachs and harps with buzzing bray pins. He is the foremost interpreter of the Robert ap Huw manuscript, containing the earliest harp music from anywhere in Europe, employing the fingernail technique specified in the manuscript, whilst reading from a facsimile of the tablature and using modern copies of historical harps.

As a teacher of historical harps, he is frequently invited to lead workshops in the UK, Europe and the US on a variety of subjects, such as arranging for small harps, using fingernail technique to play wire-strung harps and playing harp repertoire from medieval, renaissance and traditional sources. He is a teacher-in residence for Ardival Harps in the Scottish Highlands, where he offers harp courses for both beginners and players, and also teaches community music classes through Feis Rois. He has taught and performed at music festivals, in Cardiff, Edinburgh, Inverness, Nottingham, Warwick and York as well as in Ireland, Germany, Belgium, Italy and the USA. He writes a regular column for the magazine "Sounding Strings" on playing wire-strung clarsachs and currently serves as the president of the International Historical Harp Society.

Bill appears on The Rowallan Consort's 'Notes of Noy, Notes of Joy', (Temple Records COMD2058)