Simon Mayor
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Simon Mayor is a mandolinist and fiddle player, guitarist, and composer.
[edit] Works
With his debut The Mandolin Album in 1990 he embarked on a series of recordings to realize his longstanding intention to give the mandolin a uniquely British voice. The CD was immediately made Recording of the Week on BBC Radio 2 and received huge popular and critical acclaim. Many albums later, his mix of original and traditional material alongside classical show stoppers has been heralded across the media from BBC World Service (Recording of the Week) to stations all over the USA and Canada and magazines as diverse as Q, Cosmopolitan, Living Tradition (Scotland) and Sing Out! (USA).
He has written instructional books about the mandolin, including New Celtic Mandolin and The Mandolin Tutor. He is also a regular columnist for Acoustic magazine, along with Martin Taylor, Doyle Dykes, Gordon Giltrap and Julie Ellison.
In May 2000 he entered the UK's Classical Artist Top Ten with a 'best of' release of his own compositions and classical works on Universal Records.
His touring schedule has included the Rudolstadt International Folk Festival (Germany), Shetland Folk Festival, Vancouver Folk Festival, The Stephen Leacock Humour Festival (Canada), Cheltenham Literature Festival (England), Edinburgh Fringe (Scotland), The Classical Mandolin Society of America and many more.
He leads Britain's first modern mandolin quartet, the Mandolinquents. The quartet emerged from a 1997 line up, The Mandolin All-stars with multi-instrumentalists Maartin Allcock and Chris Leslie of Fairport Convention, and long time musical partner, Hilary James. The Mandolinquents now includes the renowned classical guitar virtuoso Gerald Garcia, UK banjo champion, Richard Collins and James doubling on mandobass.
He played swing fiddle on the album for the show Five Guys Named Moe, and he plays occasional folk fiddle for country dances as his schedule allows.
Simon Mayor and Hilary James have also written satirical and topical songs for BBC news programmes including Newsnight. A huge fan of fellow Yorkshire man, the late, great Jake Thackray, Mayor occasionally performs a special programme of Jake's songs.
[edit] Youth audience
He tours regularly with long-time partner Hilary James. The duo have worked extensively with young people in theaters and schools. They have also presented Play School and for six years were regular hosts of BBC School Radio's The Song Tree. In addition, Mayor has played violin, guitar, banjo and mandolin as part of the regular band in BBC School Radio's Singing Together. He has also performed a smilar role in BBC School's Time and Tune, Music Worshop and under the musical direction of Douglas Coombes for that arranger's recordings of some Come and Praise songs.
Mayor and his partner, James, have written over fifty children's songs, many for their own Musical Mystery Tour children's CDs and the Musical Mystery Tour songbook published by Faber Music. The songs have also featured on classic British children's series such as Play School, Listening Corner and Green Claws and are used extensively in education, including English language teaching courses for Danish schoolchildren. Alongside www.mandolin.co.uk they set up www.childrensmusic.co.uk in 1999.
