Rosie hood & Ollie King

Date: Saturday, September 30, 2017 at 8:00 pm (doors open at 7:30 pm)

Location: Rosemount Hall, 41 Rosemount Ave

Tickets: $23 in advance, or $25 at the door

Rosie Hood & Ollie King are two brilliant young British folk artists. They are singer guitarist Rosie Hood and melodeon whiz, singer and multi-instrumentalist Ollie King.

Having contributed to each other's recent solo albums, having done numerous live performances together and with a wealth of traditional, folk and other material in their heads, Rosie and Ollie are setting out on tour together to perform their own solo work and other, new work especially for this tour.

Rosie Hood

A BBC Performing Arts Fellow in 2015 and a 2016 Horizon Award nominee at the Radio 2 Folk Awards, Rosie has become more than purely a traditional singer. Having started learning folk songs at an early age from her family, Rosie has a keen interest in the history of traditional songs, particularly those of her native Wiltshire, where she has spent time researching in the local archives and developing a broad repertoire of local songs.

"I have tried to depict the beautiful and the actual", wrote Alfred Williams in 1923 in the introduction to his book Folk Songs of the Upper Thames. Williams not only provided the title for Rosie's debut solo album but also the starting point for Rosie's research into Wiltshire song. Williams did not collect melodies which further inspired Rosie to write her own tunes and, more recently, whole new songs that balance perfectly with the old material to make up The Beautiful and The Actual.

"She has a magical voice, an awareness of her roots, a sense of fun on stage, and of course, makes the most marvellous music" Radio 2

Ollie King

Firmly rooted in the English tradition, Ollie King's playing explores the emotive side of the melodeon which he showcases expertly through his selection of material from both within and without the folk canon.

On his most recent solo album, as well as melodeon and voice, Ollie contributes electric guitar, piano, and duet concertina to further expand the sonic pallet and help to explore the nature of the folk process - how the music morphs and changes as it passes from person to person - and how this process affects other music.

Described by Andy Cutting as "one of the finest... up and coming young melodeon players in England", Ollie King pushes the boundaries and expectations of the humble squeezebox and continues to augment that Instrument's settings.

"For a young musician, he is astonishingly mature and fluent, with a lyrical, flowing style all his own. He produces a rich, mellow sound, perhaps not unconnected to his use of vintage Hohner melodeons. Whatever difference that makes, he is a real delight to listen to." - fRoots Magazine

You can find the event poster here.