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The wonderful Snape Proms fills August with a whole range of musical delights – Located on the Suffolk coast, Snape Maltings brings together a creative campus buzzing with activity, outstanding concerts and events, and distinctive independent shops, cafés and galleries, all set within a breath-taking landscape of reeds, water and sky. Highlights include: Aurora Orchestra… Read more »
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Bryony Griffith proves that English Fiddle music is no museum piece with her deft and inspiring style. Not even when she was literally a museum piece in the National Coal Mining Museum for England as a part of the EFDSS Musicians in Museums project. She is a senior lecturer in vocals and fiddle on the new Folk Music degree… Read more »
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‘The Wildest Rose’ is the enchanting debut album from Hertfordshire based folk singer-songwriter Odette Michell. The album follows on the heels of Odette’s 2018 debut EP ‘By Way of Night’, which itself showcased a bold and emerging talent within the British folk and acoustic music scene. The EP garnered high praise and gained Odette her… Read more »
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Fast rising star on the U.K. Folk/Americana scene Emily Mae Winters has that rare quality in a singer that makes critics reach for the superlatives. Described as having a voice that “stops you in your tracks” and “arresting, enthralling, tantalising” by Americana UK, Emily combines straight-to-the-heart bitter-sweetness- with her own unique passion and drama in… Read more »
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With governments dragging their feet when it comes to virtually anything that will help to tackle the climate crisis, it comes down to the public, businesses and event organisers to take the lead. Glastonbury festival reduced their ‘plastic footprint’ hugely this year by discouraging plastic bottles and cups. The Cambridge Folk Festival has always been… Read more »
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They can do mellow and they can do mayhem. They can do dashing and they can do deadpan. They can do bitter and they can do sweet. And now Australia’s weird and wonderfully hirsute, black-clad choristers are plotting another biennial blast round Britain. Be very afraid. The Men in Black are back. Following triumphant UK… Read more »
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Nancy Kerr and James Fagan are one of the best-known and most experienced folk duos on the British circuit today. Outstanding musicianship, a lifelong grounding in traditional singing and instrumental playing, acclaimed original compositions but most noticeably a visceral chemistry between these two make Kerr and Fagan a perennial favourite at festivals, venues and clubs… Read more »
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Festival favourites, Blackbeard’s Tea Party, infamous for their frenetic fiddle tunes and thumping backline, celebrate their tenth birthday as a band in 2019 with a lengthy autumn-winter ‘Ten Yaar Anniversary’ tour across England and Wales and a special re-release of their best-known single, ‘Chicken On A Raft’. Following a packed summer schedule of festivals, including… Read more »
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Damien Barber is one of the true innovators in folk music, always pushing at the boundaries between folk dance, music and performance. He is also a flag bearer for the sleeveless t-shirt, a garment that should have been allowed to die an undignified death decades ago. Energy, drive and spectacle are words that bubble to… Read more »
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My intros to these pieces generally involve me roasting the artist slowly over a gentle heat. There’s always something I can tease apart about them for a cheap laugh (What, you thought this was a high-brow view into someone’s inner psyche?). But Irish Mythen has stymied me with one short sentence – on her Twitter… Read more »
