Music for grown-ups

The original Children are the duo above of Armorel Weston (voice and bass) and John Gibbens (voice and guitar), who started playing together around 1991 in the singer-songwriter or ‘new acoustic’ clubs of London. At various times, though, the instrumentation has included bass and drums, harmonica, trombone, violin, guitar/electronics and percussion. This is the line-up that appears on their debut album Play, released in 1999.

The songs could be said to blend elements of rock, folk, jazz and poetry, but really they are… something else. And those who’ve heard the music are no more able to label it themselves, afterwards, than the musicians are beforehand – other than to call it the real stuff.

The second album, Come Aboard, a trip down the delta of digital blues, came out in January 2002, and the third, Rockingham Street, presenting new sounds in city and western, in November 2002. These two albums were revised and reissued in 2005.

The two volumes of Songs from the Red Notebook, their fourth and fifth CDs, were released in April and August 2003.

Love Walk, The Children’s sixth CD, first appeared in December 2003. A revised edition appeared in August 2005.

The latest pair of albums are Equals (2006) and The Health of the People (2007).

There are two galleries of The Children
– at play, and at work on Play

Some of the Children who play on Play can also be found in The Improvised Vision, a gallery of drawings:

• Julia Doyle, double bass
• Alfredo Genovesi, guitar/electronics
  
• Veryan Weston, piano
  
• Annie Whitehead, trombone

When are The Children’s gigs?

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