SINGER, violinist and now songwriter Nancy Kerr leads The Sweet Visitor Band at the National Centre for Early Music, York, on Wednesday in a 7.30pm concert co-promoted by the Black Swan Folk Club.

The five-times BBC Radio 2 Folk Award winner will be playing songs from her debut solo album, Sweet Visitor, on which she wrote all the material and worked with Bellowhead and The Full English producer Andy Bell, as well as guest contributors Martin Simpson, Emily Smith, Tim van Eyken, James Fagan, Tom Wright, Tim Yates, Rob Harbron, Jess Arrowsmith and Aaron Diaz.

Already a respected interpreter of traditional material, Nancy has emerged as a writer of rare style, drawing comparisons with the Romantic poet William Blake in her re-awakening of a radical folk mythology as a backdrop for contemporary narratives of love and conflict, motherhood, migration, hardship and jubilation, and the tensions between rural and urban life.

As fellow folk luminary Peggy Seeger puts it: "Nancy Kerr's songs are unusual, intriguing. Steeped in folk song, she nonetheless breaks out of the mould, coming sideways to her subject, embroidering it with detail and surprises until the focus of the song comes clear. She is such a good singer that sometimes you really have to concentrate to get the message,- but it's worth it when you get it."

Tickets for Wednesday are still available at £15, concessions £13, on 01904 658338 or at ncem.co.uk