Events - What's New?
In response to a suggestion from one of our subscribers we have added a What's New section to our Special Events menu. This will highlight a rolling month's worth of new events. Let us know if you find this helpful.
2nd Aylsham Festival of Dance Music and Song 7th & 8th September 2018
STOP PRESS! Holt Ridge Morris and Aylsham Town Council are pleased to bring you the second AYLSHAM FESTIVAL OF DANCE, MUSIC AND SONG ON 7th AND 8th SEPTEMBER 2018.
Planning for the second Aylsham Festival is now almost complete. Venues and artists are booked, dancers of all different genres are cleaning their dance shoes (or painting their toenails), singers are going through their repertoire and musicians are exercising their fingers all in preparation for another great day in Aylsham!
The event 'sings off' on FRIDAY with a FREE FOLK NIGHT at 8pm in Aylsham Town Hall, NR11 6EL hosted by the one and only Geoff Roberts and his Flying Folk!
On SATURDAY the Market Place in Aylsham comes alive with FREE daytime DANCE EVENTS including Egyptian dance, English Dance, Morris dancing, French traditional dance, Balkan dance and Norfolk Step Dancing and, as if that wasn't enough, Broadland Ukuleles will also be giving a FREE concert.
Artists will be performing in the Conservatory, Biddy's Tearoom and the Unicorn at various times during the day with free concerts outside the Unicorn and the Drill Hall during the afternoon.
A Longsword workshop is to be held in the Drill Hall and there will be a Ukulele workshop in the Library for anyone wanting to learn or even just have a taster.
The Festival will finish with TWO SEPARATE SATURDAY NIGHT CONCERTS in the Town Hall
by local personality and renowned melodeon maestro TONY HALL, 7.30pm.
followed by the supremely talented singer/song writer/guitarist MARTIN SIMPSON, 9pm.
Come along for a great day out! Enjoy the music, song and dance – even participate in the workshops and join us for the evening concerts.
For further information - https://www.facebook.com/AylshamFestivalDMS/
For Concert Tickets - contact Aylsham Town Hall tel: 01263 733354, or purchased online at : https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/aylsham-town-council
TONY HALL, 7.30pm £7.00, and MARTIN SIMPSON, 9pm £20.00 (OR BOTH FOR an excellent £22.50).
Below is A REVIEW OF LAST YEAR'S EVENT to 'whet your whistle'!
Friday 8th and Saturday 9th September 2017 saw a new Folk venture launched by Aylsham Town Council in North East Norfolk - billed as a Morris/Folk Weekend - AYLSHAM FESTIVAL OF DANCE, MUSIC AND SONG will become a regular event in the County's Folk calendar at the end of the summer holidays, after such a successful debut.
Read more: 2nd Aylsham Festival of Dance Music and Song 7th & 8th September 2018
Julia Clifford - Katie Howson
Katie Howson, ex-Director of The East Anglian Traditional Music Trust, is currently undertaking a research project into the life and music of Julia Clifford, an important traditional fiddle player, originally from Kerry but a resident of East Anglia in the later years of her life. Katie is looking for information anyone has about Julia.
Julia Clifford was a wonderful - and very influential - fiddle player from east Kerry who lived in England for most of her life. After the issue of several LPs, in particular The Star Above the Garter in 1969 and the Topic series in 1977, the music played by Julia, her brother Denis Murphy and accordion player Johnny O'Leary helped to define a style now known as Sliabh Luachra.
Within months of the issue of those albums, Julia moved to Norfolk and the last twenty years of her life and music have been undocumented until now. Anybody wishing to know a bit more about Julia Clifford is recommended to visit the Rushy Mountain website https://rushymountain.com/2016/04/22/julia-clifford/
Anybody with memories of Julia is invited to get in touch by messaging Katie's Facebook page, I looked East and I looked West. More details of the associated research project are here: https://katiehowson.co.uk/research
Clive Gregson & Liz Simcock
Saturday 19th May Canopy Theatre, Hungate Church Beccles
Acclaimed singer/songwriters Clive Gregson & Liz Simcock first toured together in 2015 in a series of shows performing songs from the Clive Gregson & Christine Collister back catalogue. The tour was a resounding success, so Clive and Liz decided to keep the partnership going and in October 2017 they released Underwater Dancing, a CD of 14 brand new Clive Gregson songs
They undertook a very successful and well received tour in support of the album in autumn 2017 and will be embarking on the next leg of that tour in early summer 2018, bringing them to the Canopy Theatre at Hungate Church Beccles on Saturday 19th May at 8.00 p.m.
Photo Sara Porter
Hadleigh French weekend
Hadleigh Folk and Acoustic Music Nights hosted another weekend of French music and dance form 6th - 8th April, attracting well over 100 people from all parts of the country. Our main guests, La Chavannée, have been responsible for some of the best interpretations of traditional music from Central France for the last 50 years.
Tony Hall's Folk Band Night moves to new venue
From April, Tony Hall's Folk Band Night will move from the Duke of Wellington to The Reindeer, Dereham Road,NR2 4AY.
They will be playing every week on wednesdays and as before, this is a listening session (not joining in)
(known formerly as The Von Krapp Family Band)
The Ballad of Shirley Collins - Film release
Widely regarded as the 20th century’s most important singer of English traditional song, Shirley Collins is someone who was born to invoke the old songs. Alongside her sister Dolly, she stood at the epicentre of the folkmusic revival during the 1960s and ‘70s. But in 1980 she developed a disorder of the vocal chords known as dysphonia, which robbed her of her unique singing voice and forced her into early retirement.
The Ballad Of Shirley Collins - which premiered at this year’s London Film Festival - tells this story, though to reduce it to that single aspect
does everyone (not least of all Shirley!) something of a disservice. The story proves itself to be something of a time-travelling Transatlantic road-movie of sorts, utilising a motherlode of archive audio to recount the tale of her seminal 1959 song-collecting trip around America’s Deep South alongside her then-lover (and legendary ethnomusicologist) Alan Lomax. As well as these songs (notably Alabama Sacred Harp Convention, Texas Gladden and Sidney Hemphill-Carter) there are more recent offerings, a home recording of Shirley's sister Dolly Collins, and a BBC session from 1958, "Eight Five Spiritual" which gets its first release, some 60 years after it was recorded.
Shirley Collins spent her life in song. Even during her time without her performing voice she was telling the stories of others’ music. Not once has she dropped the baton in keeping these songs, these stories, these people alive. The soundtrack to ‘The Ballad Of Shirley Collins’ - though diverse - showcases just a fraction of the facets that make up an extraordinary career by anyone’s standards.
"Music Documentary Of The Year" – Louder Than War
"One of the great voices in British folk music" - The Guardian
Deliberately eschewing a straightforward biopic approach, Rob Curry and Tim Plester's follow-up to their award-winning documentary WAY OF THE MORRIS, is a lyrical response to the life-and-times of this totemic musical figure. Granted intimate access to recording sessions for Shirley’s first album of new recordings in almost four decades, and featuring contributions from the comedian Stewart Lee and David Tibet of Current 93, what emerges is a meditative and carefully textured piece of portraiture. A timely delve into the arterial blood, loam and tears of our haunted island nation. The film was released in October and has played more than 50 venues to date. January 9th is the date to look out for, with the film showing at around 30 venues across the country. Between then and January 20th there will be screenings in:
Bath , Birmingham, Bradford, Brighton, Edinburgh, Exeter, Glasgow, Henley, Liverpool, London, Norwich, Oxford, Southampton, Torrington and York.
Performance dates can be found HERE