Showcase with Jaki Alden and Pete Wilks on Friday 25 May

On Friday 25 May we welcome well known local performers Jaki Alden and Pete Wilks as showcase guests at the song session. Jaki (cello and flute) and Pete (fiddle, banjo, guitar) are accomplished instrumentalists and singers, with an eclectic mix of acoustic songs and tunes, some ancient and some modern. Look forward to an evening of mellow sounds.

Entry is free, with a raffle, and all are welcome to come along to the session, whether to sing, play or listen. Bring songs and tunes, and your own drinks. Teas and coffee are available in the kitchen.

Chris Sherburn and Denny Bartley with Emily Sanders on Friday 27 April

Chris Sherburn and Denny Bartley have been bringing their unique sound to audiences across Europe and America since the early 1990s, when a chance meeting at a music session created one of folk music’s most enduring partnerships. The duo were founder members of the band Last Night’s Fun, which achieved international fame.

Chris (concertina) grew up surrounded by folk music of all kinds – his home was a regular haunt for passing folk singers and musicians. Denny (guitar and vocals), born in Co. Limerick, is drawn to the inheritance of age-old slides, slow airs, slip jigs and wild reels. The duo are joined by wonderful fiddle-player and singer Emily Sanders.

Let us know if you are planning to come along via the email on our contact page. Tickets £11 (£8 members) can be reserved and paid for on the door. Bring your own drinks. Teas and coffee are available in the kitchen (50p). Some parking is available immediately outside the Christ Church Centre – please double park to help us get more cars in!

Jackie Oates duo on Friday 16 February

Since appearing as a finalist in the BBC Radio 2 Young Folk Awards 2003, singer and fiddle-player Jackie Oates has performed extensively at festivals and venues across the country and beyond, in a solo capacity and with her band. A founder member of Northumbrian group and Mercury nominated Rachel Unthank and the Winterset, Jackie is now a permanent member of the folk super-group The Imagined Village, as well as touring in her own right.

Jackie has several albums, including ‘The Spy Glass and the Herringbone‘, which contains lesser known but life-affirming songs from the English tradition and was released in 2015. In researching her 2013 album, ‘Lullabies’, Jackie invited submissions over the internet and the collected songs are housed at the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library at Cecil Sharp House in London, home of the English Folk Dance and Song Society. Poor Robin

Tickets £11 (£8 members). Reserve by emailing via the contact page. Bring your own drinks. Teas and coffee available in the kitchen. Please double park to allow as many cars in the carpark as possible.

The Shackleton Trio on Friday 19 January

The guests on Friday 19 January will be the Shackleton Trio, a lively local band featuring fiddle-player and songwriter Georgia Shackleton, supported by guitarist Aaren Bennett and mandolin player Nic Zuppardi. Georgia writes and performs ‘wordy songs about other people’, instrumentally influenced by British, American and Scandinavian folk traditions, with a regional twist.

The Trio have toured the UK, Belgium and the Netherlands, and have performed at Cambridge Folk Festival and Folk East, Towersey and Broadstairs Folk Week, as well as folk clubs across the UK.

Tickets £11 (£8 club members) can be reserved via our contact page. Bring your own drinks. Teas and coffee available in the kitchen.

The club’s Christmas Party will be on Friday 22 December. All welcome. Bring your own drinks and perhaps some food to share.  Seasonal songs, tunes and a grand raffle.

Norwich Folk Club will also meet on Friday 29 December this year.

Said the Maiden on Friday 10 November

Photo by Elly Lucas www.ellylucas.co.uk

Award winning trio Said The Maiden are Jess Distill, Hannah Elizabeth and Kathy Pilkinton, three friends who discovered a mutual love of folk music when they reunited several years after spending their school years together in Hertfordshire. After tentatively performing a few songs at their local Redbourn Folk Club, the group soon gained a great deal of interest on the local and national folk circuit, securing major support and headline slots at folk clubs and festivals around the country.

Said the Maiden have also opened for many great artists including The Full English, The Fisherman’s Friends, Jim Moray, Megson, Martin Carthy, Clannad, Cara Dillon, False Lights and Fairport Convention. They were also honoured to join legendary fiddler the late Dave Swarbrick on a successful UK solo tour in the spring of 2014, and released their debut album ‘A Curious Tale’ in June of the same year. In 2016, the group went on to release their EP ‘Of Maids And Mariners’, which was met with critical acclaim across the folk community and in 2017 the trio won the Folking Awards ‘Rising Star’ prize.

“Rising doyennes of the folk scene … I can hear why Said The Maiden have already made themselves a healthy reputation, and I can also sense a strong measure of untapped potential.” (David Kidman, FATEA Magazine)

Tickets £11 (£8 club members) can be reserved by emailing us via the form on the contact page. Bring your own drinks. Teas and coffee available in the kitchen.

On Friday 27 October the song session theme will be Halloween. Tenuous connections to the theme are equally welcome.

The James Brothers on Friday 13 October

Photo: Elly Lucas

The James Brothers come from the lands down under – Australia and New Zealand to be precise; lands in which the traditional songs and tunes of the British Isles have evolved their own unique characteristics. And it’s these songs and tunes, and several of their own making, that The James Brothers have united to play.

Sydney-born James Fagan is best known as one half of Nancy Kerr & James Fagan (musically and maritally), but also spotted playing guitar and bouzouki in The Cara Dillon Band, the live circus that is Bellowhead and with his parents and sister as The Fagans, where his folk career began.

Jamie McClennan is a Kiwi who found himself in a duo with Scotland’s BBC-award-winning Emily Smith (whom he also married) having chosen not to follow his first bandmates to Ireland, where they formed the much celebrated Gráda.Jamie has been sighted on fiddle, whistle and guitar next to the likes of Sharon Shannon, Beth Nielson Chapman, Jerry Douglas and his mum.

Tickets £11 (£8 club members) can be reserved by emailing via our contact page. Bring your own drinks – teas and coffee available in the kitchen.

Granny’s Attic on Friday 9 June

Granny’s Attic – Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne (melodeon, concertina, vocals), George Sansome (guitar, vocals) and Lewis Wood (fiddle, mandolin, vocals) – are a folk trio who play the tradition with verve, energy and their own inimitable style. These three young men are all exceptional musicians, fine singers and play a range of English, Irish and Scottish traditional music as well as their own compositions.
Formed in 2009, Granny’s Attic have since played at clubs and festivals up and down the country, and have been heralded for their lively performances and maturity beyond their years in their delivery and selection of traditional songs. Videos
Granny’s Attic will be our guests at the gig on Friday 9 June at 8 pm. Tickets (£11 or £8 for club members) can be reserved by emailing us via our contact page. Bring your own drinks. Teas and coffee will be available in the kitchen.

Moore Moss Rutter on Friday 13 January

mmrOn Friday 13 January we welcome the first guests of 2017, Moore Moss Rutter. A series of remarkable gigs has heightened the sense of anticipation around the reunion of Jack Rutter (Seth Lakeman Band), Tom Moore (False Lights) and Archie Churchill-Moss (Beyond the Marches) in the trio that won them the 2011 BBC Radio 2 Young Folk Award. The intervening years have seen them play with some of the biggest and best acts in English folk music, and now they reconvene to release the follow-up to their much acclaimed debut album.

Widely regarded as three of the best players of traditional folk amongst a precociously gifted generation, their music features ancient traditional material from Britain as well as newly composed tunes and songs, and focuses on their own movements from the countryside to large cities, and the contrasts that come into play.

Tickets £11 (club members £8) can be reserved via the form on our contact page. Bring your own drinks – teas and coffee available in the kitchen.

Lady Maisery on Friday 4 November

lady-maisery2Lady Maisery, who were nominated for the ‘Horizon’ BBC Folk Award 2012 and for ‘Best Debut’ at the Spiral Awards 2012, comprise Hannah James (Kerfuffle, duo with Sam Sweeney), Hazel Askew (The Askew Sisters, The Artisans) and Rowan Rheingans (Fidola). The trio explore vocal harmony through fresh interpretations of songs and ballads, and each member is also an accomplished instrumentalist, together creating a rich tapestry of fiddle, banjo, harp, concertina, accordion and foot percussion.

Lady Maisery are also one of the foremost English proponents of traditional mouth music, or ‘diddling’, a form of singing without words. Over the last five years, the trio have released two critically acclaimed albums (five stars in the Financial Times, Album of the Week in The Independent), made many appearances on national radio and toured widely, performing sell-out shows across the UK and Europe. Lady Maisery’s third album is to be released in autumn 2016.

Tickets £12 (£9 club members). A very few tickets are still available, so please use the email form to contact us if you would like to come along. Bring your own drinks – teas and coffee available in the kitchen.

 

The Askew Sisters on Friday 18 March

2014-duo-01On Friday 18 March the club is very pleased to welcome back Emily and Hazel Askew – winners of Best Traditional Album in the Spiral Earth Awards 2015. The sisters play rhythmic foot-stomping tunes on fiddle and melodeon, and deliver powerful interpretations of songs and ballads, revealing an infectious enjoyment and love of English folk music.

‘The breezy robustness of their musicianship is demonstrated in the joyous way the two parts switch around, colluding and colliding during the course of a tune set, adeptly maintaining listener interest while keeping feet tapping … infectious pumping energy characterises their performance’, fRoots magazine.

Tickets £10 (£7 club members) can be reserved by emailing via our contact page. Bring your own drinks. Coffee and tea available in the kitchen. Please note the start time will be 8 pm and end time 11 pm, as with all future club events and regular song sessions.