SIDMOUTH Folk Festival, one of the biggest events in the folk and traditional music and dance calendar, is 70 this year. It is not the 70th festival (Covid and other factors intervened), but this seaside celebration of folk music, dance and song began in 1955, and it’s back this year from 1st to 8th August,…
SHAFTESBURY Fringe, three days of every kind of entertainment imaginable, returns to the historic Dorset town from 18th to 20th July, with a programme of more than 300 events (a record number) spread around 37 venues. As director Rob Neely says, it’s all about Shaftesbury: “From its very creation, Shaftesbury Fringe has acted as a…
YOU don’t often hear the phrase “protest singer” these days, but the tradition – which stretches back for many years in unions and traditional working communities, and was reinvented by the folk singers of the 1960s – lives on in Reg Meuross, the Crewkerne-based singer-songwriter whose work has always championed the issues of the day,…
BIRDSONG has been an inspiration to composers and musicians for centuries, from the trills of Vivaldi’s Goldfinch Concerto to Beyonce’s cover of the Beatles’ Blackbird. Now, the Lark Music-Making Competition, launched this week in association with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, encourages today’s amateur instrumentalists to take flight with their own interpretations. Open to anyone over…
SOME people these days state their intention to work until they can retire at 45 and enjoy their houses, cars, children, pastimes and leisure while they are still comparatively young. And comparing them to Peggy Seeger, that’s sort of half-grown. The American-born singer-songwriter, half-sister of folk singer Pete Seeger, is still perhaps best known as…
ONE of the world’s greatest cabaret singers and a brilliant song arranger, Barb Jungr comes to Taunton Brewhouse on Thursday 8th May, and Bridport’s Electric Palace on Saturday 10th, with Hallelujah on Desolation Row, a celebration of the songs of Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. This show features her best and award-winning interpretations of songs…
SINGERS from several Dorset choirs have been working with Anglo-Chilean band Quimantú on a project that ends on 15th, 20th and 22nd June with concerts at Sturminster Newton and at London’s “Actors Church”. The collaboration, organised by rural touring charity, Artsreach, has brought Misa de los Mineros (The Miners’ Mass) to audiences across the county….