ELFEN: Llantrisant Folk Club, Pontyclun Athletic Club, July 26, 2017 It’s Summer and the folk scene’s Silly Season, and most clubs go on their extended holidays and don’t start again until September – which makes it all the more remarkable that spectacular trio Elfen played to a crowded room, and Llantrisant Folk Club organisers had…
Mary Ann Kennedy is a Scottish Gaelic musician, singer, choral director, composer, radio and television presenter and music producer; she also trains and conducts Còisir Ghàidhlig Inbhir Nis, the Inverness Gaelic Choir, and she used to be a founder member with the Gaelic ‘super-group’ Cliar. Both she and her musician husband Nick Turner produced her solo…
THE SPOOKY MEN’S CHORALE: St David’s Hall, Cardiff, July 12, 2017 Sometimes it seems to me that there is something in my subconscious that, when going to gigs for review, says: “Do that one – traffic will be a nightmare that day”. In the past I’ve tried to get to Bristol on the day a…
THE RACHEL NEWTON BAND: Roots Unearthed, L3 Lounge, St David’s Hall, Cardiff, June 27, 2017 Folk Awards multi-winner Rachel Newton has chalked up many impressive plaudits as a founder member of all-woman band The Shee and harper with The Furrow Collective and The Emily Portman Trio, so she’s not a stranger to South Wales. However,…
COOPE BOYES AND SIMPSON: Roots Unearthed, Lefel 3, St David’s Hall, Cardiff: May 9, 2017 Barry Coope, Jim Boyes and Lester Simpson – three Yorkshire and Derbyshire singers with names that resembled a firm of solicitors – came together in 1990, the core of the Derby-based ceilidh band Ramsbottom; they sing close-harmony acapela in an…
CATRIN FINCH & SECKOU KEITA: Acapela Studio, Pentyrch, April 28, 2017 They have toured in Wales, the United Kingdom, Europe and all the world over, clinching the fRoots Album Of The Year award for Clychau Dibon and being nominated as Best Duo and Best Traditional Track in the Radio 2 Folk Awards; international harpist Catrin…
NANCY KERR & THE SWEET VISITOR BAND: Roots Unearthed, Lefel 3, St David’s Hall, April 25, 2017 Nancy Kerr is a visionary songwriter and an exciting, effervescent fiddle musician, who is the proud possessor of a mesmerising voice. She is the daughter of London-born singer-songwriter Sandra Kerr and Northumbrian piper Ron Elliott, and she inherited…
A new project to incorporate a pivotal collection – which includes 50 shanties and forebitters of the South Wales tall-ship sailors, thought to be long-lost for 50 years – into the world’s largest online searchable database of folk songs and music has been announced. The digitised collection of James Madison Carpenter, which has previously only…
MÁIRE NÍ CHATHASAIGH & CHRIS NEWMAN: Llantrisant Folk Club, Pontyclun Institute Athletic Club, March 15, 2017 One of my greatest regrets was that I missed a rare appearance of the The Casey Sisters at this year’s The Gathering Irish traditional festival in Killarney; circumstances conspired against us, and we remained in South Wales while Máire,…
PETER KNIGHT’S GIGSPANNER: Rumney Folk Club, March 17, 2017 Peter Knight is an absolutely phenomenal player on the violin. For all these years, Peter and the successful, storming Steeleye Span were inseparably linked; but since he left Steeleye six years ago, Peter has dreamed of leading a compact trio which could explore and experiment with…