On Friday April 23, Pete Nutkins of Watford Folk Club will be hosting an online concert featuring four New Roots finalists: Lilian Grace, Robbie Sherratt, Cathy Bennett and Callum McKellar, selected by his club as part of a series of online concerts featuring New Roots finalists.

Lilian Grace is a young singer-songwriter who specialises in unaccompanied traditional English folk song. Her songs are full of haunting vocals and rich harmonies and are, on occasion, augmented by her minimalist use of concertina. Although still only 21 she has already self-released an E.P. of protest songs and has performed extensively as a solo artist. She went on to record Death and the Lady, a collection of four traditional songs released in late 2019 on Wildboar Records. She is presently working on an album of self-penned titles exploring the lives of influential women who have been forgotten or written out of history.

Robbie Sherratt is a fiddle player from the Staffordshire Moorlands. His debut album ‘Provenance’ draws from traditional music and melodies in and around his home county. Currently, Robbie is studying for a Master’s degree in Folk music at Sibelius Academy, Finland where he is honing his fiddling, teaching, and composing skills. He performs regularly in concerts and dance events in Finland, England and Estonia with duo Eva Väljaots and Robbie Sherratt and with the Helsinki Ceilidh Band.

Cathy Bennett has been part of the Cornish folk scene all of her life and for the two years before the pandemic, she did lots of gigging all over Cornwall and beyond with her band Black-Eyed Nancy. She has now moved to Sheffield and New Roots was her first endeavour as a soloist. She sings a mixture of traditional and recently composed songs in both Cornish and English and also plays the viola, sometimes using it to accompany her singing.

Callum McKellar is a singer from Cornwall now living in Devon with a repertoire of unaccompanied songs focussed around the South-west and the West Midlands. He grew up attending folk festivals and began making music when he was around 15, when he joined a Morris side and began getting involved in singing in pub sessions. Around the same time, he was also singing for musical theatre productions, and in a folk a cappella group as part of Wren Music. He has also been a performer and workshop leader with Streams of Sound since 2015.

The evening will end with a set from a new and so far unnamed vocal trio in which Cathy Bennett and Callum McKellar sing with Katy Coope.

Tickets are £10 for individuals, £15 for two people using the same device, and £20 for three or more people using the same device. Concessions are £8, £12 for two people sharing the same device and £15 for three or more. To book go to www.ticketsource.co.uk/stalbansfolkmusic

Further information:

http://www.stalbansfolkmusic.org.uk