Sue has presented workshops in Yorkshire Longsword at various festivals specialising in workshops for children. She is also a dance caller. She enjoys MCing at concerts and she was awarded an EFDSS Gold Badge in 2016.

Taffy Thomas has been a part of the folk scene for over 50 years. Notably, he has dreamed up and directed two companies, Magic Lantern and The Fabulous Salami Brothers. His work at Festivals and in Education have led to him receiving an MBE and the EFDSS gold badge. He introduced traditional storytelling to the Whitby programme, something he continues to foster with his nightly popular Taffy’s Tunes & Tales sessions. Through these and other performances at Whitby he continues to inspire a new generation of folk interested in ‘preserving the past, revealing the present and creating the future through story and song’ as Taffy says.

The Davenports are Liz, (vocals), Paul, (vocals and duet concertina), Amy (vocals) and Gavin (guitar / cittern and vocals). They perform a range of traditional material together with more modern offerings in a very traditional style.Their songs are drawn either from extensive research into the tradition or spring from Gavin’s or Paul’s ever-fertile pens.
Many of their songs are now to be found in the repertoires of some very well-known performers both in UK as well as further afield. Their performance of these is both accompanied, either on duet concertina, guitar or cittern, or unaccompanied.

The Wilson Family is an English folk music group from Billingham, Teesside, North East England. They have been singing and performing a cappella folk songs since 1974. Over those decades the group members have consisted of sister Pat and five brothers: Tom, Chris, Steve, Ken and Mike.

The accepted benchmark for powerhouse unaccompanied singing, they were awarded the Gold Badge of the English Folk Dance & Song Society (EFDSS) in 2017, the highest honour the society can bestow.

The present-day group are the original core members, Tom, Chris and Steve and youngest brother Mike.

Vic Gammon is a singer and instrumentalist (playing mainly the tenor banjo, anglo concertina and melodeon). He performs English traditional songs and instrumental music and his own compositions. He is also a writer and researcher and has composed music for stage and radio plays. He has been a member of various groups including The Etchingham Steam Band with Shirley Collins in the 1970s, and Dearman, Gammon and Harrison until 2017. He has performed on a number of recordings, most recently a collection of his own song compositions ‘A Very Paltry Rascally Original’ (2022) and an instrumental album ‘Early Scottish Ragtime’ (2016). His anthology album ‘The Tale of Ale’ is a classic and has been available since its release in 1977.

Vicki and Jonny are two of the most versatile musicians of the folk circuit today, a on stage – and now online, the duo are recognised for the high quality of their polished concerts; not only by their charismatic singing and playing but also by their involving, winning presence and easy rapport, their polished delivery that genuinely respects their listeners, and their lively, informed backstories.

Vicki Swan & Jonny Dyer have developed an enviable reputation for their ability to reimagine folk and folk dance music; creating sounds that are simultaneously new and progressive, and yet entirely sympathetic to the tradition. They have become deeply involved in folk dance over the last ten years; contra, ceilidh and social dance both as the duo and as Purcell’s Polyphonic Party. They often insert performance elements into their dance music. You are very likely to find yourself dancing to a song – and we dare you not to sing the chorus as you go.

Traditional Song Tunes and Ballads from the British Isles and the Appalachian Mountains.

Ruth and Sadie, veterans of Whitby Folk Week and two of the finest exponents of sibling harmony on the English folk scene, have teamed up with Lisa (the Mermaid) Oliver who adds a new dimension to their sound with her refreshing harp accompaniment and occasional 3rd harmony. Their new album ‘Mermaids Welcome’ is hot off the press this summer and they’ll be delighted to sell it to you.

Over 43 years of performing on the UK folk circuit, Stanley has racked up gigs in the thousands (not many thousands), songs in the hundreds (lots), and fun in the milliards.

The songs come from all sources, traditional, modern, and suddenly random. Topicality sits jowl by cheek with history.

He is always evolving, sometimes revolving. At Whitby he is usually to be seen in a wide range of activities. Nearly 250 of his songs are recorded on a sound-DVD “League Record”

Steve Turner is a pioneer of highly sophisticated English concertina song accompaniments; he is a singer and multi-instrumentalist, playing mandolin and tenor banjo and accompanies himself on the concertina. He has performed at folk festivals, clubs and concerts throughout the UK and toured America, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Holland and Italy. Steve’s performances are characterised by strong melodies and a warm connection with the audience.

Mike is the artistic director of Blaize, a community arts company. He is a director, actor singer and musician working mainly, though not exclusively, on Blaize projects. He is the lead researcher for the Music@the Heart of Teesdale youth music project. This provides material for the youth bands ‘Cream Tees’ and ‘Wear’d Aliens. He runs regular singing sessions for dementia groups in Barnard Castle and Middleton-in-Teesdale. He was the Arena Theatre Director at the Sidmouth International Festival 1999 – 2004. He is the Towersey Festival Showground Director 2009 – present. He performed with the Fabulous Salami Brothers street theatre act 1979 – 1999 including performing at the World Expo’s in Vancouver 1986 and Brisbane 1988. He played melodeon and sang with the folk group Flowers & Frolics. They recorded three albums. There are occasional re-union performances.

Founded in 1949 for the King’s College rag week in Newcastle upon Tyne, the Newcastle Kingsmen evolved into widely acclaimed masters of the traditional Northumbrian Rapper sword dance, and are also expert practitioners of the Grenoside longsword dance and Royton northwest dance.

Pete has been a professional musician since 1971, playing at festivals concerts, clubs, dances & schools throughout Britain, Europe, Asia, New Zealand & USA. During the ‘70s he toured and recorded with Chris Coe, was a member of the legendary New Victory Band & with Nic Jones, Tony Rose and again, Chris Coe, he was a member of Bandoggs. In the late ‘80s and early ‘90s he toured and recorded with Red Shift but since 1985 he’s mainly worked as a soloist & earned an enviable reputation. His strong, distinctive voice is enhanced by his instrumental versatility, the ringing strings of his bouzouki, the sweet chords of his mountain dulcimer, the plaintive frailing banjo & the pulsing reeds of his melodeon. He’s also a country dance caller, creator & band musician. He sings, plays & step dances, sometimes all at once!

Pete Shepheard is an acknowledged authority on folk song. Pete’s new book on the great Aberdeenshire bothy ballad singer Jock Duncan – The Man and his Songs has just been published. Pete’s contacts with Stewarts of Blairgowrie and Jeannie Robertson’s family in Aberdeen led to his exploration of traveller tradition and extensive song collecting. He is a singer and melodeon player with a song repertoire that includes many songs from his own collecting. He has recorded two albums as part of a trio (Shepheard, Spiers and Watson) with Tom Spiers and Arthur Watson. He has presented lectures and workshops based on his song and music collecting, on ballad repertoire, traditional singing style, song repertoire among the Romany gypsies of Gloucestershire and among the Scottish travelling and farming communities in Fife, Tayside and Aberdeenshire.

 

Kevin Sheils came to folk music in the mid 60s at his youth club. Since that time he has been a regular singer and resident at many of London’s top Folk Clubs. He is a regular concert MC at some of the country’s major Folk Festivals, including Whitby, and for the past 20 years has presented the weekly “Traditional Music Hour” radio show on London based Arts Radio Station – ResonanceFM

Martin & Shan sing traditional songs together, mostly unaccompanied and in harmony. Their repertoire is based mainly on the songs of southern England, particularly those found by the Devonshire folk song collector, Sabine Baring-Gould, whose life and work Martin has been studying for several years. Shan is also well known for the workshops that she leads on aspects of voice use and care. Martin’s book As I Walked Out, Sabine Baring-Gould and the Search for the Folk Songs of Devon and Cornwall (Signal Books, 2017) has received both the Katharine Briggs Folklore Award and the R. G Hoskins Prize.

Matt Quinn is a singer and instrumentalist and has spent over 15 years performing from small folk clubs to Glastonbury & WOMAD. Primarily a mandolin and duet concertina player, he is well known for his skills on the melodeon and as a singer and is in demand on the English folk scene. In the past, Matt has travelled abroad, performing and teaching melodeon in the Netherlands and Iceland, as well as flexing his acting muscles alongside his musical skills in the Mick Ryan folk opera A Day’s Work alongside Pete Morton, Greg Russell, Paul Downes and others. Known as one third of The Dovetail Trio, Matt currently works in the ceilidh bands Geckoes and The Discussion Topic, and in a mandolin/guitar duo with George Sansome (Granny’s Attic). Matt can also be seen in the unaccompanied harmony trio Culverake with fellow singers Lizzy Hardingham and Seb Stone.