TWO Martins with guitars are to play together in the National Centre for Early Music’s spring season in York.
Jazz guitarist Martin Taylor and acoustic and slide guitar player Martin Simpson will share the stage on April 5, adding to each other's songs and instrumental pieces and taking them to new levels.
Before then, the April programme will open with Malija on April 3, bringing together three band leaders in their own right: saxophonist Mark Lockheart, pianist Liam Noble and bass player Jasper Holby. Together they will perform original material by each band member, with diverse influences from bluegrass and tango to old-fashioned jungle grooves, as paraded on their debut album, The Day I Had Everyone. Be prepared for a simple, complicated, tight, floaty, beautiful and heartfelt sound-pool, depending on the mood.
The Young'uns, voted Best Group at the 2015 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, will play York on April 15 on The Three For All Tour in a co-promotion with the Black Swan Folk Club. David Eagle, Michael Hughes and Sean Cooney switch between ballads and banter, poignant songs and irreverent humour, storytelling and social commentary.
The York Late Music Festival is teaming up with the NCEM to present Hildur Guonadottir, an Icelandic cello player, singer and software manipulator, on April 17. At the forefront of experimental contemporary music, Hildur has composed for theatre, dance and film and received commissions from the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra, Tate Modern and British Film Institute and has four albums to her name.
The University of York Baroque Day on April 30 will take the music of Vivaldi, Handel and Corelli as its inspiration in concerts at 12.30pm, 3pm and 7pm. Compagnia d'Istrumenti violinists Daniel Edgar and Nia Lewis, cellist Tim Smedley and harpsichord player Peter Seymour and the University Baroque Ensemble will present The Fam'd Italian Masters, while trumpet player Crispian Steele-Perkins will explore the development of the trumpet from Rome to the concert halls of Haydn and Mozart.
John McCusker
Scottish fiddle, whistle and cittern player, composer and producer John McCusker's 25th anniversary tour will visit York on May 3 when his 7.30pm concert will be preceded by McCusker In Conversation from 7pm to 7.15pm. McCusker is marking his 25 years as a professional musician with a book of his compositions, a solo record and a tour with accordion ace Andy Cutting, Adam Holmes, Innes White and Toby Shaer.
James Fagan and fellow 2015 BBC Folk Award winner Nancy Kerr are making waves in the folk world in their band with seasoned Sheffield duo Richard and Jess Arrowsmith, known as Melrose Quartet. Their bold take on English songs both old and new, with many of the latter penned by Nancy or Jess, can be heard in York on May 16 in a joint show with the Black Swan Folk Club. Four-part harmonies will combine with crunchy twin fiddles, full-bodied melodeon and powerful bouzouki.
Vula Viel, playing York on June 5, bring the Daggare tradition from upper west Ghana to Britain in the hands of gyil player Bex Burch, who lived there for a while. Vula Viel means "Good is good" in Daggare, the local tribal language, and Bex now uses it as the name of the London group she formed to perform a mix of African, electronic and minimalist music.
The Amores Pasados quartet of lutenists Ariel Abramovich and Jacob Heringman, singer and hardanger fiddle player Anna Maria Friman and vocalist John Potter will feature texts by Shakespeare and his contemporaries in musical settings on June 9. Their programme will include songs of lost love commissioned from Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones, Tony Banks of Genesis, Sting and Gavin Bryars and lute songs by Campion and Dowland.
June Tabor
Singer June Tabor, mellifluous saxophonist Iain Bellamy and off-kilter pianist Huw Warren will unite as Quercus on June 17, weaving together folk and jazz in their bittersweet chamber music, which combines original compositions with traditional folk songs and reclaimed standards.
As part of the 2016 York Festival of Ideas, singer-pianists Ian Shaw and Liane Carroll will perform the first in a series of NCEM Sunday Afternoon Jazz concerts from 4pm to 6pm on June 19. Their repertoire covers the jazz songbook, contemporary songs such as Carole King's You've Got A Friend and their own originals.
Guitarist John Etheridge and new vocal star Vimala Rowe, from Paco Pena's Flamencura at Sadler's Wells, will travel musically from India to Africa, the Middle East and the United States on July 1, when they also will be In Conversation from 7pm to 7.15pm.
For tickets, ring 01904 658338 or book online at ncem.co.uk
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