The 2015 Beverley Folk Festival has a stellar line-up of award winning artists, with 10, several of which are multi-award winners over the past years, as well as two nominated in this year’s BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards.
These include festival favourites who stole the show at last year’s festival, Greg Russell and Ciaran Algar who have been nominated for the Best Duo Award and Nancy Kerr who has been nominated for Folk Singer of the Year – Nancy is this year performing alongside the previous BBC Radio 2 Folk Award winning Martin Simpson and Andy Cutting.
Past winners and nominees include the multi award winning young singer, Seth Lakeman; the Scottish group hailed as being the future of Celtic dance music, Peatbog Faeries; guitarist and singer, Martin Simpson who was nominated 23 times in 11 years and has won numerous awards, one of which was Best Duo with Andy Cutting in 2003 and 2011. Greg Russell and Ciaran Algar who have received two awards already and Lucy Ward who won the Horizon Award in 2012 for best emerging artist. These will all be joining the glorious ranks of the elite artists performing.
One of the festival headliner’s for this year, Ralph McTell is not one to have been left out of this list, having been honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award for Song Writing in 2002. Sharing the Finale Concert on the Sunday of the festival, is Barbara Dickson, who co-hosted the Folk Awards for several years, along with the festival’s patron, Mike Harding.
The line-up is certainly a celebration of some of the great young talent that is around on the folk and music scene at the moment as well as names that have been at the forefront of the music scene for many years. The festival very much celebrates young talent and its programme of activities during the year and over the festival weekend. It demonstrates its commitment to encouraging young performers to have a go and get on the ladder towards becoming professional performers, and take the next step to becoming future BBC Radio 2 Award winners!
To see the Winners, there is no need to head to the Folk Awards, just come along and enjoy the atmosphere of the festival in the beautiful surroundings of the Beverley Westwood common land, with the famous gothic Minster towering in the distance.
