Three captivating women, each well known for their fine musical interpretations have joined together to perform a concert featuring traditional and contemporary folk music from England, Ireland, Scotland and America, with selections from over 300 years worth of material. They have already had great success presenting their Faire Winds show to enthusiastic audiences across the East Coast and the Mid-West States of America in 2002.

All three women in this trio have a passion for collecting, arranging, writing and performing acoustic folk music for as wide an audience as possible.

Besides their stellar solo and harmony singing, they also play a wide variety of acoustic instruments including guitar, banjo, whistle, flute, bodhran, piano, and accordion, and perform startling arrangements supporting each other on stage.

Aoife Clancy was born in Co Tipperrary, Ireland and by the age of 14 was singing in pubs with her father, Bobby Clancy, one of the famous Clancy Brothers. She toured extensively throughout the USA and Europe with ‘Cherish the Ladies’ for over four years, before returning to concentrate on her solo work. She has released five recordings in the last two years.

Anne Hills, an established singer songwriter native to America, has 14 CD recordings to her credit that include in addition to her own songs, traditional American music recordings and collaborative writing with the internationally acclaimed folk writers Tom Paxton and Michael Smith. She has been presented with many awards including the 1997 Kerrville Music Foundation award for Outstanding Female Vocalist of the Year, her children’s recording Never Grow Up was chosen for the coveted 1998 Parents’ Choice Award and just recently on January 17th of January 2003, from the World Folk Music Association, The Kate Wolf Memorial Award (a singer-songwriter who makes a difference with her music).

Bill Jones in comparison is a relative newcomer to the UK music scene. In 2001 she won the Horizon Award for the best newcomer at the BBC Folk Awards for her debut album ‘Turn to Me’. Her arrangements are of traditional songs influenced by the many types of music that Bill has been involved with and inspired by, including jazz, contemporary classical music, pop music and acappella singing. Since her first gig in May 1999, Bill’s lively and enthusiastic approach to music has quickly established her as one of our major folk stars, delighting both die hard devotees of acoustic music and newcomers to the genre, and gaining considerable national radio airplay.

The three women bring music from their three different cultures in new and exciting arrangements to thrill audiences of all ages. There are sets with songs steeped in history from England, Ireland, Scotland and America, which will capture your by telling the tales of the past alongside many new and contemporary songs which are firmly set in our modern world.

Review

The synergy between the three illustrious folk divas Anne Hills (USA), Aoife Clancy (Ireland), and England's Bill (Belinda) Jones was magical, fulfilling completely our expectations of a memorable evening of quality folk music to kick off our Autumn season of Talbot gigs. Each is a firmly established figure in her own right: Anne Hills, seated centre-stage, has the bearing and authority that betoken decades of experience, a tally of 14 solo albums, and (as it happens) her marriage to the editor of Sing Out, America's premier folk music journal. Switching easily between guitar and banjo, her songs are marked as much by concerns for political and social justice as they are by the personal. Scion of a celebrated Irish folk dynasty, Aiofe Clancy's strength is a crystalline and expressive voice, backed up by effortless guitar skills and a gentle pair of hands with the bodhran. Seated stage-left, a cheerfully pregnant Bill Jones shone on piano of great delicacy, and sprightly accordion and whistle; she draws the listener in with an engagingly low-key, homely rapport, but the purity of her voice could silence a city street.

Your reporter freely admits to taking no notes - the softly intimate low-volume approach adopted by their sound engineer rendered the Faire Winds experience far too engrossing and beguiling to bother with scribbling song titles down in the darkness, and as the three voices interwove, rising and falling for an attentive audience, spells were cast. Bill's 'Hey Away', Anne's 'Sound of the Looms', and Aiofe's stunning take on the traditional 'Silvery Moon' registered especially with me, but audience response and plentiful CD sales suggested that everybody found moments to treasure. All in all, even if Faire Winds were a little on the formal side for a few palates, they surely proved convincingly the truth of the old adage, that 'Good Taste is Timeless'.