News

A free, half-day workshop at Sheffield University on using the Vaughan Williams Library Digital Archive, and its latest addition the James Madison Carpenter Collection.

The UK’s biggest indoor festival of World Music returns this October with a fantastic lineup including: Afro Celt Sound System, Benjamin Zephaniah & The Revolutionary Minds, Maarja Nuut, Jamie Smith’s Mabon, Rory McLeod & The Familiar Strangers, O’Hooley & Tidow, Grace Petrie and more.

Exclusive: Listen to Wild Ponies new album Galax on which they pay tribute to the powerful music and rugged landscape of Southwest Virginia, where both Wild Ponies’ members Doug and Telisha Williams were born and raised. European Tour October and November 2017.

BBC Radio 2 Folk Award Nominees 2017 Ninebarrow have announced that they are currently working on album number three – The Waters and the Wild. Watch footage of a recent rehearsal for a special trio concert with Lee Cuff on cello.

Blue Rose Code unveils the first cut from his forthcoming new album, The Water Of Leith. ‘Love Is…’ – a duet with the multi-award winning folk singer and multi-instrumentalist, Julie Fowlis, talks of ideals and anticipation.

Folk experimentalists and storytelling trio Harp and a Monkey release new video for ‘Clean White Sheets’, a song commemorating Nellie Spindler, a nurse from Wakefield in Yorkshire who died this day, one hundred years ago.

Ian Randall Thornton’s sound echoes with a history beyond his years, listen in full to his forthcoming self-released album Lineage. “At its heart, Lineage is about family… and the process of sifting through our cultural and familial inheritance, seeking to honor and sustain what is beautiful and beneficial, while uprooting what is hindering and unhealthy.”

Scott Hirsch and Michael Chapman will share the same bill for the first time in September with a series of UK dates. Both artists cast a mercurial eye on their art-form, moving the primitive guitar into realms of blues, jazz and the avant garde.

Song of the Day comes from the Commoners Choir who are dedicated to singing about the world around us, its inequalities and injustices, and their (4-part vocal harmony) opposition to such injustice. This is dedicated to the mass trespass of 1932.

Sam Brookes has unveiled a new live video which offers the first glimpse of his forthcoming single Always Will. The session was recorded in an abandoned canal tunnel in Gloucestershire which is over 2 miles in length – meaning for some incredible spine tingling reverb!

We celebrate the Fleadh with Pólca 4, a high energy group specialising in music from the West Kerry region, guaranteed to get the foot tapping and the blood flowing a great night is always on the card when these boys are in town.

For our Song of the Day we head to The Royal in Dungworth, Sheffield where Jack Rutter performs the folk song Young Susan on Board of a Man-of-War which features on his forthcoming solo debut album Hills.