Chris While & Julie Matthews at The Seagull

2019 sees Chris While and Julie Matthews celebrate 25 years of performing together and, although they have performed here as members of the Albion Band, St Agnes’ Fountain and Daphne’s Flight, in all of that time they have incredibly never played a public gig as a duo in Suffolk….until now!!

On Saturday 12^th October Chris and Julie will be bringing their silver anniversary tour to the Seagull Theatre in Pakefield.

 

Read more: Chris While & Julie Matthews at The Seagull

Gilmore & Roberts at The Seagull

Having headlined the Beccles Acoustic Music Day in 2017, the hugely talented Gilmore & Roberts will be making a very welcome return to north Suffolk this autumn, touring in support of their latest album “A Problem of our Time”.

Katriona Gilmore (vocals/fiddle/mandolin) & Jamie Roberts (vocals/guitar) combine great songwriting, astounding musicianship and wonderful harmonies to create a powerful sound. Nominated 3 times at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards and winners of the FATEA Award for song of 2018 (“Bone Cupboard”).

They’ve recorded and shared stages with a wide range of famous artists, toured Canada and Europe, played the UK’s biggest acoustic festivals, toured with Fairport Convention and won countless accolades for their genre-spanning work.

 They will be coming to the Seagull Theatre in Pakefield for the first time on Thursday 3^rd October. Tickets are £12 (concessions £10) and are on sale now from the box office (01502 589726) or online at www.theseagull.co.uk/event/gilmore-and-roberts/

 ‘Hot property’ – fRoots

See lots of recent videos at https://www.youtube.com/user/gilmoreroberts

The Bridge in the Club Tent at Cambridge Folk Festival 2019

• Cambridgeshire

Strumming and Dreaming

from Les Ray

The undersigned is delighted and privileged to be involved in running The Bridge, the umbrella group for folk clubs, sessions and open mics around the Cambridge area that we launched in 2017. Last year we were invited to organise some music for the Club Tent on the Saturday afternoon of Cambridge Folk Festival (see my column in issue 144), and I’m please to say we’ve been invited back this year.

We’ll be packing a huge variety of fine music by young and not-so-young performers into our three hours. The promising youngsters include Lizzy Hardingham from Hertfordshire, who won the Royston Folk Club Young Artists Award last year, I Claudia and Josh Robins from Cambridge, the former an exciting, eclectic performer and the latter a fine songwriter with an excellent selection of covers (he can often be seen busking in Cambridge).

Two more experienced acts are When Rivers Meet and 4-piece band DodoBones. When Rivers Meet are a blues and roots rock duo from Essex, and exciting live act who combine well crafted self-penned songs and reworked traditionals. DodoBones, from Hertfordshire, are an acoustic indie band with an ironic-pop edge.

Our ‘veteran’ this year is Terry Hiscock, a founder member of the band Hunter Muskett, who were formed back in 1969. After two albums they eventually wound up the band in 1974, but reformed in 2010 to record a third album and return to performing. Terry will be performing his own beautifully crafted songs, accompanying his fine voice with skilful guitar playing.

Cambridge 105 Radio are hoping to be broadcasting from the Cherry Hinton site again this year, including a special Festival Edition of my show Strummers and Dreamers, so look out for details on the station’s website closer to the time. For performer profiles and photos and website links, check out The Bridge website.

https://www.cambridgebridge.co.uk

https://cambridge105.co.uk

https://www.cambridgelive.org.uk/folk-festival

I looked East and I looked West

• Suffolk

by Simon Haines and George Monger

I looked East and I looked West, was the title of a weekend to celebrate the life and music of Julia Clifford, organised by Katie and John Howson and held at the John Peel Centre in Stowmarket on the weekend of 26-28 April.

I was not able to attend the whole weekend, so this is necessarily a partial – in both senses of the word - account of what went on.

Julia Clifford (1914-1997), was a wonderful fiddle player born into a musical family in Lisheen, Co. Kerry, in an area known as Sliabh Luachra, renowned for its poets and traditional musicians. Through seminal recordings made in the 1970s, Julia and her brother Denis Murphy helped define what is now a well-known genre of Irish traditional music. Julia and her husband John Clifford, also a musician, had been living in London since the 1940s, but shortly after the recordings came out, they moved out to Thetford in Norfolk, and as far as publically available information goes, they all but disappeared from view. However, this period, and especially after 1981 when John died, was actually a busy period of music-making for Julia, with a younger generation of enthusiasts and a new audience on the English folk scene.

Read more: I looked East and I looked West