DERBYSHIRE folk singer-songwriter Bella Hardy will showcase songs from her ninth solo album, Hey Sammy, tonight in York on the day of its release.

After her 2015 album With The Dawn, Hardy undertook extensive musical expeditions far from home, relocating temporarily to Nashville, where she became immersed in Music City’s culture of collaborative songwriting, while working happily in the company of horses as a ranch hand too.

Two music-finding trips to Yunnan Province in Southwest China also saw this BBC Radio 2 Folk Singer of the Year Award winner return with a suitcase overflowing with new lyrical and musical notions.

These radical changes of life and perspective have resulted in 11 new songs replete with innovative, artful arrangements and gleeful, melodic choruses on the grown-up Hey Sammy, produced by Mogwai and Arab Strap producer Paul Savage at Glasgow’s Chem19 studio.

Queen Of Carter’s Bar and In My Dreams were penned in collaboration with Nashville producer and songwriter Peter Groenwald; Busy Head and Heartbreaker were made with in-demand Scottish jazz pianist and composer Tom Gibbs, who played keys on the record alongside Iain Thomson on guitars, James Lindsay on bass and John Blease on drums and percussion. All other instruments were played by Hardy herself.

Humanist hymns, ancient Chinese poems, feminist battle cries and the title track’s reflections on the rise of racism in Britain make Hey Sammy her most wide-reaching album of her decade-long career.

Hardy will perform at the National Centre for Early Music tonight with songwriting collaborator Tom Gibbs on piano and Scottish guitarist Anna Massie. Tickets for this Hey Sammy Album Launch Tour date - co-promoted by the NCEM with the Black Swan Folk Club - cost £17, concessions £15, students £5, on 01904 658336 or at ncem.co.uk.