Fyfe Dangerfield - full name Fyfe Antony Dangerfield Hutchins - is the charismatic frontman of avant-garde pop group Guillemots, recently named by Sir Paul McCartney as his favourite new band.
Their debut album Through the Window Pane, released in July 2006, went gold and was nominated for the 2006 Mercury Prize, and the band was also nominated as best live act in the Brits this year. They are currently recording their second album in a converted synagogue in East London.
Born in Birmingham in 1980, Fyfe spent the first seven years of his life in Moseley before his family moved to the outskirts of Bromsgrove. Blessed with perfect pitch, he was classically trained as a pianist from an early age, also learning to play the oboe and teaching himself guitar (which he plays left-handed, despite being right-handed).
At Bromsgrove School, where one of his contemporaries was jazz saxophonist Soweto Kinch (who says a cassette still exists of them playing together) he performed the slow movement of Rachmaninov's First Piano Concerto at a school concert and formed his first band, Senseless Prayer, with two friends, recording a mini-album in the school's music studio.
A subsequent Senseless Prayer EP, recorded at UB40's DEP Studio in Digbeth, caught the ear of the legendary John Peel, who invited the band to record a Radio 1 session in 1999.
After the demise of Senseless Prayer in 2001, Fyfe moved to London. He worked as a steward at the Royal Festival Hall while beginning a search for new collaborators which was to prove extremely protracted.
Eventually he linked up with drummer Greig Stewart and guitarist MC Lord Magrao, a refugee from the Sao Paolo "noise" scene, but work on Guillemots' debut EP was well advanced before the final member fell into place, following an unexpected reunion with Canadian double bass player Aristazabal Hawkes, an old acquaintance from the period when Senseless Prayer were living in Cheltenham.
Another Cheltenham friend, artist and bass clarinettist Chris Cundy, sparked Fyfe's interest in free improvisation, and both have been active in sessions on the free music scenes in London and Oxford. Cundy now performs regularly with Guillemots along with another free music luminary, Alex Ward.
As well as being a prolific songwriter Fyfe is also a classical composer who has written several pieces for Birmingham choir Ex Cathedra, who recorded his antiphon O Emmanuel on one of their CDs. Ex Cathedra will revive his first choral piece, A Better Resurrection, written when he was 19, at their Town Hall concert in October.
Fyfe's major classical opus, the 30-minute Music on the Moon for 60 strings and solo double bass, remains unperformed. He has been commissioned to write a new work for the CBSO as part of the festival to mark the reopening of the Town Hall in October, when Guillemots will share the stage with the orchestra.
Fascinating fact: While working at the Royal Festival Hall, Fyfe arrived early some days to play his guitar in the reverberant acoustic of the fire escape. He recorded an album's worth of material there and has considered releasing it.
