Meet the Team

Sam Wilkinson, Joint Vice-Chair

Sam ‘Sammy Boy’ Wilkinson is best known for organising the Lockdown Sessions. He got a tremolo when he was three and dabbled in playing the harp in his teens and twenties, until making a serious effort to play in the late noughties. He is also a keen bass player. His main claim to fame is appearing on Eggheads (Series 21, Episode 38 - it’s on Youtube). His favourite foods are sausages and custard, but not necessarily on the same plate.

Phil Leiwy, Treasurer

Phil is a practising chartered accountant. Phil is very interesting, especially when he’s talking figures. His Excel spreadsheets are colour-coded. Getting him to spend HarmonicaUK money is like pulling teeth. In his spare time, Phil performs a cockney music/music hall act under his alter ego, Harmonica Lewinsky, playing guitar, playing harmonica in a brace, and singing. It’s not very good. His other interests are buying DIY tools from the middle of Lidl and telling people he’s going on holiday during lockdown. He’s on his third butler.

Richard Taylor, Joint Vice-Chair

As a former travel professional, Richard rarely ventured abroad without a harmonica. He holds the world record for playing Stone Fox Chase at the most airport security checkpoints worldwide. Self-taught, Richard’s punk-blues style led to lesson requests, whereupon he started music teaching. He launched the Harp Surgery website, commenced weekly workshops, and co-founded the Harpin’ By The Sea annual harmonica festival. He also set up Harp Academy, teaching harmonica to 4-11 year old schoolchildren. Having joined the NHL in the 1980s, Richard is now a proud committee member of HarmonicaUK and happy to provide tips on harmonica travel safety.

Davina Brazier, Secretary

Davina is a keen chromatic and woodwind player. She performs locally with a mixed wind ensemble and is also learning the piano accordion. Her background in healthcare management has helped to equip her for the secretary role. In her spare time, she does aerial circus, fire and flow arts, and rides a unicycle!

Welcome to the April issue of Harmonica World. We’ve got a great selection of articles in this issue, so thanks are due to all our contributors for making Harmonica World such a great read. This news page is a new feature that will appear in each issue going forward, so if you have any contributions that are too short for an article, please send your news items to me by email and we’ll include them here. We are also introducing a ‘Me and My Harmonica’ feature, which are short (300-word) articles about our members and their harmonicas. It could be about you and your harmonicas, how you found the harmonica, or NEWS UPDATE perhaps you’ve played with famous musicians, or at well-known venues. Please send me your ideas by email. Barry Elms At Harmonica World we always need volunteers Editor to write articles or reviews, or generally to help out. For articles we need either 300 or 600 words, ideally in Word or Pages format, and some photos or images to go with them if possible. If you’d like to help or submit an article, please get in touch by email. Barry Elms, Editor, editor@harmonica.co.uk

Chromatic Weekend 2021

Due to uncertainty about when Covid restrictions are ending this year we have decided to run the Chromatic Weekend on Zoom again this year, on 19/20 June. This was successful last year and we attracted some of the world’s best chromatic players and hope to do again. Since then we had both the festival and Harpin’ by the Sea on Zoom and we will be hoping to innovate and build on improvements made.

Jimmy Regal and the Royals

Jimmy Regal and the Royals appeared on Radio 4’s Loose Ends on March 13th. The band, featuring Joff Watkins on harmonica, performed their song ‘Can’t cry no more’ in collaboration with Senegalese singer and kora player Diabel Cissokho. The song was recorded during lockdown in South London and Senegal and is a combination of South London and West African blues. You can listen on catchup here: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000t411 and memories for the archive Do you have any old (pre-2000) harmonica magazines, event posters or programmes, photographs, sound and video/ film recordings, badges, etc., to fill in gaps in my archive? Any memorabilia or even memories from the four NHL 'get togethers' held in Cecil Sharp House, London (twice), in Birmingham, and Manchester in 1977-79 would be very useful. Fred Southern made