Steve Mansfield

I started playing tin whistle aged 15 having previously been put off music for a few years by the recorder teacher at school. I then fell in with the right sort of people and discovered traditional music, was welcomed with open arms as a musician by the Sheffield University Folk Dance Society in 1980, and have tried to never miss a day's playing music since (even if it's only two minutes silently playing across the top of a tin whistle).

I started playing English concertina in 2005; currently the proud keeper of a Wheatstone 48-key from 1854, a CC Jackie from 2005, and a Morse Geordie baritone from 2013. I also play fife, flute, low whistle, rauschpfeife, and bouzouki, so could be quite a decent one-man band if I only had enough arms and mouths. Bisonoric instruments like anglo concertinas or melodeons, however, render me completely helpless, to the great amusement of friends and bystanders.

Most often seen out and about with The Powderkegs Border Morris and the ceilidh band Flash In The Pan, and in sessions in and around the High Peak of Derbyshire. I'm very partial to English, French and Scandinavian traditional music (the EC might have been designed for polskas), Renaissance and baroque music, classic 70s prog rock, and odds & ends of all sorts of other genres. I have also helped pioneer the extremely niche musical genre of bluegrass rauschpfeife, and take very little persuading to attempt to play just about anything on concertina, fife, or low whistle.