Here’s the main concert line up – more artist announcements to come across the other festival stages and events!
Kris Drever
Cherished and admired in equal measure by listeners and fellow musicians, award-winning guitarist, singer, songwriter and prolific collaborator Kris Drever is a leading light on the UK roots scene.
A highly skilled guitarist who adroitly blends traditional folk and flat picking with more contemporary influences – allied to a distinctively relaxed and poised vocal burr – Drever is an astonishingly fine interpreter of others’ songs, with an increasingly frequent knack for concocting seriously smart lyrical observations and earworm melodies of his own. Read more
Angeline Morrison
Angeline is one of the key voices in English folk music today, celebrated for her soulful, resonant voice, evocative songwriting, and deeply affecting performances. Her diverse influences span traditional, alt-folk, soul and beyond. Her forthcoming album explores themes of alchemy, magic, and decolonisation, embracing the transformative power of the union between darkness and light. Her groundbreaking album The Sorrow Songs: Folk Songs of Black British Experience, released on Topic Records, was hailed as The Guardian’s Folk Album of the Year, it spent 15 weeks in the Top 40 Official Folk Albums Chart. Read more.
Blair Dunlop Trio
Blair Dunlop is an award-winning British singer-songwriter and guitarist whose blend of virtuosity and storytelling has captivated audiences across the world. Since bursting onto the scene with his acclaimed 2012 debut Blight & Blossom—an album that earned him a prestigious BBC Folk Award—Blair has continued to push musical boundaries with five albums, two EPs, and countless live performances spanning the UK, Europe, North America, and Australia.
Lisa Knapp & Gerry Diver
Lisa Knapp and Gerry Diver are a remarkable musical partnership at the forefront of contemporary folk. Lisa’s spellbinding vocals and command of traditional song blend seamlessly with Gerry’s acclaimed production and multi-instrumental talents. Together, they create richly textured, emotionally resonant music rooted in English and Irish traditions, layering twin fiddles, voice, percussion, autoharp, electronica and field recordings into bold, atmospheric arrangements.
The Rosie Hood Band
Rosie Hood is a folk singer, songwriter and guitarist known for her magical voice and sense of fun on stage (RnR), crystal clear vocals, poetic & socially-conscious songwriting and interesting arrangements of traditional songs. It’s clear from her writing that Rosie is fascinated by quiet pioneers and in fact has much in common with the remarkable people she sings about. A former BBC Performing Arts Fellow and Horizon Folk Award nominee, Rosie has toured extensively both solo and in many collaborations.
Suntou Susso & Ross Grant
A new duo of two incredible musicians. Suntou Susso is a multi instrumentalist from The Gambia and was born a Griot. His primary instrument, the kora, is a harp-lute with 22 strings and is unique to the Griots of the Mandinka people. Coming from a 700-year-old tradition, Griots play an important cultural role as peacekeepers and oral historians, transmitting and preserving culture through the generations using song, music and poetry. He is also a producer, composer, singer, song-writer and teacher.
Ross Grant is a violinist, composer and music educator. A versatile musician, Ross has performed across Europe in a huge range of ensembles and settings. Having played the violin for over twenty-five years, the energy and passion he has for music is infectious in his playing and his teaching.
Tarren
Tarren is a collaboration between Bristol based musicians, Sid Goldsmith, Alex Garden and Danny Pedler. Ambassadors for New-Folk, the trio create music that is fresh and dynamic as well as being rooted in the English tradition. Original and traditional material is expertly arranged combining citter, concertina, fiddle, and accordion.
Patakas
Joe and Will Sartin, the talented brothers behind this assured folk duo, are rapidly making a name for themselves on the folk festival scene, having only started their musical collaboration just three years ago. Combining Will’s dexterous mandolin, bouzouki and fiddle playing with Joe’s expressive guitar and sublime vocals, the duo creates a captivating and heartfelt acoustic sound, rooted in the tradition of music-making that runs through the core of their family.
Heather Cartright
Heather Cartwright is a folk guitarist and singer whose fingerstyle and flat-picked guitar playing provides a vibrant backdrop to her well-crafted self-penned songs and interpretations of traditional material. Her song writing draws upon old stories, her own life experiences growing up in the Lake District, and poetry, old and new.