Eliza Amy Forbes Carthy, MBE is an English folk musician known for both singing and playing the fiddle. She is the daughter of English folk musicians Martin Carthy and Norma Waterson.
The Cambridge Folk Festival is an annual music festival, established in 1965, held on the site of Cherry Hinton Hall in Cherry Hinton, one of the villages subsumed by the city of Cambridge, England. The festival is known for its eclectic mix of music and a wide definition of what might be considered folk. It occurs over a long weekend in summer at Cherry Hinton Hall. Until 2008 it was sponsored by BBC Radio 2, who broadcast it live, with highlights were recorded and shown later and occasionally live on digital television channel BBC Four from 2002 to 2009 and from 2010 to 2012 on Sky Arts.
The BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards celebrate outstanding achievement during the previous year within the field of folk music, with the aim of raising the profile of folk and acoustic music. The awards have been given annually since 2000 by British radio station BBC Radio 2.
Topic Records is a British folk music label, which played a major role in the second British folk revival. It began as an offshoot of the Workers' Music Association in 1939, making it the oldest independent record label in the world.
Norma Christine Waterson was an English singer and songwriter, best known as one of the original members of The Watersons, a celebrated English traditional folk group. Other members of the group included her brother Mike Waterson and sister Lal Waterson, a cousin John Harrison and, in later incarnations of the group, her husband Martin Carthy.
Fairport's Cropredy Convention is an annual festival of folk and rock music, headed by British folk-rock band Fairport Convention and held on the edge of the village of Cropredy in Oxfordshire, England. The festival has taken place in August annually since 1976.
Spiers and Boden are an English folk duo. John Spiers plays melodeon and concertina, while Jon Boden sings and plays fiddle and guitar while stamping the rhythm on a stomp box. Spiers and Boden were founding members of the folk band Bellowhead.
There has been a folk festival in the coastal town of Sidmouth in South West England in the first week of August every year since 1955, attracting tens of thousands of visitors to over 700 diverse events.
Kathryn Williams is an English singer-songwriter who to date has released 14 studio albums, written and arranged for a multitude of artists, and was nominated for the 2000 Mercury Music Prize.
The Middlewich Folk and Boat Festival takes place in June in Middlewich, Cheshire, England. The festival builds on the town's industrial heritage in which canal boats were used to move coal and other raw materials in the town for the production of salt, and then move the salt out of town, either for use directly, or as a raw material in the manufacture of chemicals such as chlorine and soda ash.
Roy Bailey, was an English sociologist and folk singer. Colin Irwin from the music magazine Mojo said Bailey represented "the very soul of folk's working class ideals... a triumphal homage to the grass roots folk scene as a radical alternative to the mainstream music industry."
The Village Pump Festival is a folk music festival that takes place near Trowbridge, England. It has its roots 54 years ago in a barn at the Lamb Inn, Trowbridge, and later moved a few miles outside the town to Stowford Manor Farm at Farleigh Hungerford. The music covers a variety of genres from folk and roots to blues, celtic and Ceilidh with a variety of other entertainment including a family field, with puppetry and story telling.
Blue Murder is an occasional English folk supergroup, consisting at various times of various members of Swan Arcade, Coope Boyes and Simpson, Waterson–Carthy and The Watersons.
Jon Boden is a singer, composer and musician, best known as lead singer and main arranger of Bellowhead. His first instrument is the fiddle and he is a proponent of "English traditional fiddle style" and also of "fiddle singing", both of which he employed in Bellowhead, in the duo Spiers & Boden, and previously as a member of Eliza Carthy’s Ratcatchers.
The Unthanks are an English folk group known for their eclectic approach in combining traditional English folk, particularly Northumbrian folk music, with other musical genres. Their debut album, Cruel Sister, was Mojo magazine's Folk Album of the Year in 2005. Of their subsequent albums, nine have received four or five-starred reviews in the British national press. Their album Mount the Air, released in 2015, won in the best album category in the 2016 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. In 2017 they released two albums featuring the songs and poems of Molly Drake, mother of singer-songwriter and musician Nick Drake.
Martin Green is an English musician and composer. He is the accordionist in the folk trio Lau, who won a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Artists.
Sam Carter is a British guitarist, singer and songwriter, originally from the English Midlands but more recently based in Sheffield. He has released four albums of mainly original material which fall loosely into the folk/roots category. Carter is the winner of the "Horizon" award for best newcomer at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards in 2010. Highly regarded as an instrumentalist, contemporary Jon Boden of Bellowhead described him as 'the finest English-style finger-picking guitarist of his generation, and former BBC Radio Two folk show presenter Mike Harding wrote that Carter was "one of the most gifted acoustic guitarists of his generation.". As a songwriter, Carter marries a traditionally English narrative style with elements of American gospel, shapenote, R&B and folk-rock has been described as an "impressively original" performer. Some commentators consider that Carter's guitar and vocal style is similar to that of noted British iconoclasts John Martyn and Roy Harper, whilst his lyrical perspective has further invited comparison with the work of Richard Thompson.
David Watson is an English record producer, singer and musician. Born and raised in North London, he has produced albums for Paul Wassif, Mark Abis, Sam Sallon, Dylan Howe and Claudia Brücken, and has worked with artists such as OMD, Rufus Wainwright, Neil Cowley, Beth Rowley, Eric Clapton and Bert Jansch. He is the father of actress Indica Watson.
Wickham Festival is a four-day music event that takes place in the village of Wickham, Hampshire, England. Wickham hosts live music and comedy across four stages, as well as food stalls, craft stalls, real ale and cider bars and children's entertainers. It has been listed by The Guardian as a top 'Family Friendly Boutique Festival'. The 2015 Wickham Festival was named Best Festival at the Live UK Music Business Awards, and the 2018 event won Best Festival at The Guide Awards, with the 2019 event taking the title of Best Live Event.
FolkEast is an English music festival which started in 2012 at Somerleyton Hall, Suffolk, England. In 2013, it relocated to Glemham Hall in Little Glemham, Suffolk, where it currently holds its annual festival on the weekend before the August bank holiday weekend.
