Jackie Oates & John Spiers

Multi award-winning and hugely influential contemporary folk musicians Jackie Oates and John Spiers bring their breadth of experience and shared love of English traditional folk tunes and songs to this finely matched duo. Concerts include traditional, original music and selected covers, and a host of instruments are played – fiddle, melodeon, percussion, recorders and stomp box – creating a richly textured sound. Jackie Oates stands at the heart of the British folk scene as one of the country’s most cherished and distinctive voices. A two-time BBC Radio 2 Folk Award winner and five-time nominee, Jackie is an exquisite singer, expressive fiddler, composer, and multi-instrumentalist whose work has continually expanded the boundaries of what folk music can be. John Spiers is a leading British squeezebox player, mixing infectious dance tunes with incredibly sensitive and moving slow airs on a mind-boggling range of squeezeboxes. He has carved his own space in the folk scene with his blending of traditional squeezebox styles with knowledge of contemporary dance music to create an infectious acoustic groove.