The mandolin has been transformed into a highly eclectic instrument by Simon Mayor. Although he also plays fiddle and guitar, Mayor has built his reputation with his ten mandolin-based albums and his BBC2 radio series Marooned with a Mandolin. A self-trained musician, Mayor played ukulele as a youngster. Presented with a guitar on his 11th birthday, he switched to the six-stringed instrument. His interest in Irish fiddle music was sparked by a recording he heard as a teenager. Although the school music teacher discouraged his taking up the instrument, he taught himself to play both the fiddle and mandolin from recordings he acquired. Within 18 months, he was playing well enough to win a national music championship. He strengthened his skills by playing with a variety of Celtic and rock bands while attending Reading University, where he studied Russian. From the early '80s on, he has worked in an acoustic duo with vocalist and mandobass player Hilary James. Between 1985 and 1991, the pair presented music educational programs for the BBC, in the process co-writing and performing more than 60 children's songs. Together with James, Mayor also performed with a western swing band, Slim Panatella & the Mellow Virginians. Mayor and James have continued to explore a wide variety of musical genres. Together with classical guitarist Gerald Garcia, ex-Fairport Convention multi-instrumentalist Maartin Allcock and Richard Collins, they formed the Simon Mayor Quintet, soon known as the Mandolinquents. In 2018, Mayor's first anthology of poetry and biographical anecdotes was published, Of Death and a Banana Skin on Ilkley Moor. In addition to touring and recording, Mayor has produced a wealth of mandolin teaching material (books and videos) and regularly hosts mandolin residential workshops in the U.K. and abroad. ~ Craig Harris