COMPOSER and guitar virtuoso Richard Durrant lives on the cusp of folk and classical music.

He really is top drawer and has his guitar playing fingers in many pies, including an ambassador for the Brighton Youth Orchestra, patron of Guitars on the Beach in Shoreham by Sea, patron of Ropetackle Film Society, Fellow of London College of Music and board advisor to Guitarras del Corazon in Paraguay. And in 2017 he launched his online teaching website the Richard Durrant Academy.

He’s also regarded as a pioneering ukulele player, performing unaccompanied Bach on top of the Itaipu Dam in Brazil.

He invented the popular Ukulele Circuit Training for players of all abilities and in 2017 was funded by the PRS For Music to write Six Grooves for Ukulele, a 47 minute, six movement ukulele concerto which includes parts for community uke players.

Richard has just released his first double album, Stringhenge and to tie in performs selected dates across the UK to launch the recording, playing Upfront Gallery and Theatre, near Penrith on Saturday, September 29.

Available on double vinyl, double CD and as download, the first of the two Stringhenge LP set features a collection of solo instrumentals.

Richard chose to record on a concert guitar crafted from a 5,000 year old English oak by Gary Southwell, a four string tenor guitar made in Ditchling by Ian Chisholm (decorated with a silver Uffington Horse) and a humble ukulele.

From the offset his recitalist’s credentials are apparent in a collection of confident, jazzy and very English arrangements of JS Bach placed alongside Durrant’s distinctive renditions of British folk tunes and his own evocative pieces.

His style of guitar playing has been described as English folk baroque with echoes of Renbourn and Jansch but, as one of the great guitarists of his generation, Durrant seems to rise above any comparisons with his carefree fluency of technique and musical confidence. Typically for Durrant there is more than a whiff of ‘prog’ about this production not least in the sumptuous artwork by Sussex artist Mark Charlton who depicts the Sussex landscape mixed with guitar parts colliding with bits of Neolithic bog oak.

On the second part of the album, whimsically entitled The English Guitar HymnalRichard is no longer the virtuoso soloist. Instead, he adds deft touches of double bass, cello, shruti box, mandolin, keyboards and even lead vocals. He’s also joined by some stellar players, including recorder wizard Piers Adams, Howard Beach (harpsichord and chamber organ), master fiddler Nick Pynn and percussionist Stephen Hiscock. Singer Robert Andrews, daughter Daisy Durrant on backing vocals, accordion and whistle, and Sompting Village Morris whose bells, sticks and dance moves can be heard on Durrant’s epic song Morris Dreams, are all added to the mix.