Medieval Banquet

‘None The Wiser’

Nominated Best Original Song ‘None the Wiser’ BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards 2014

Folk Singer of the Year & Best Original Song ‘Hollow Point’ BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards 2011

Criticised by an art school lecturer as having “a remarkable eye for trivia” Chris Wood’s love of small things has made him one of England’s most vivid and arresting song writers. With gentle intelligence he weaves the tradition with his own contemporary parables. Hollow Point is his chilling ballad of the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezez and Wood’s feel for the sheer “one thing after another-ness” of life allows us, for the first time, to see the event through the eyes of the victim.

Joan Armatrading presented Chris with the 2011 BBC Radio Two Folk Singer Of The Year award before inviting him as special guest onto her Autumn 2012 tour. They played 51 cities and Wood found himself eavesdropping on conversations from pound shops to tea rooms, army recruiting centres to hotel saunas collecting the poetry of recession. His response is, None The Wiser, a fourth solo album released in Summer 2013. With humble hymns and sweeping statements from Alzheimers to William Blake, Wood lovingly takes the pulse of his homeland in what could be his best album yet.

Wood has worked and collaborated with a long list of artists, most recently Dizraeli, Billy Bragg, Eliza and Martin Carthy in Simon Emerson’s Imagined Village. His duet with Eliza added to the “Villager’s” winning another Folk Award for “Best Traditional Song”.

The Irish Times dubbed him ‘the renaissance man of English folk’ because his work extends beyond song writing into commissions for Radio 3 Between The Ears, Late Junction and The Essay. He has written for The Times and lectured at Newcastle and Limerick Universities. His setting of Blake’s Jerusalem features in Paul Gilroy’s lecture on poetry and music at Kings College London and Wood’s lyric Walk This World With Music is included in Michael Morpurgo’s latest collection.

Praise for ‘None The Wiser’: 

INDEPENDENT  ✰✰✰✰✰
“The title track alone is a masterpiece”

EXPRESS  ✰✰✰✰✰
“Wood has honed his songwriting to perfection here… heartbreaking purity.”

THE GUARDIAN  ✰✰✰✰
“Remarkable for the settings as much as the lyrics.”

THE IRISH TIMES ✰✰✰✰✰
“Nobody comes even close to equaling his bird’s-eye-view”

MOJO ✰✰✰✰
“a rarefied talent, both as writer and interpreter.”

SONGLINES
“a quietly powerful, astute and vivid set of songs…A folk–soul album”

£12 with £11 concessions.

Visit chriswoodmusic.co.uk

The songwriting force behind the phenomenally successful acoustic duo (now trio) Show of Hands, Steve continues his solo ‘Grow your own’ tour of village venues with this appearance at the Tolmen Centre. He is renowned for his strong, trademark narrative songs which reflect the escapades, hopes and fears not only of people in his native West Country but of those beyond, and he pulls no punches when writing highly literate songs about bigger, global issues. Worth the ticket price just to hear the Cornish anthem ‘Cousin Jack’ performed by the Devonian who composed it, but expect an intense and engaging evening with a great musician.

Tickets £16

In aid of Save the Children

Johnny Cowling has been an entertainer for over ten years with a unique blend of humour, music and a rare ability to bond with his audience.

One of our great undiscovered comedy talents….brilliant – a true entertainer, who could make anybody laugh.” Fern Britto

Tickets £8, Conc. £7

Coming to us straight from WOMAD, Steve Sogo and Hope Street. He is a young and very dynamic musician from Burundi who took to the guitar in the middle of the civil war to express his wish to live and to live a normal life.This music is pure, original blues. His songs are a cry for life; full of pain and hope.

Steve Sogo makes acoustic, hand made music that can be perfectly combined with African traditional sounds in a perfect reflection of his cultural identity and heritage.

Tickets £9, £8 Children £4

The Third International Tolmen Guitar Festival will run for three full days October 14^th 15^th and 16^th 2011.  There will be 5 major recitals/concerts covering Classical, Jazz, World Music, Flamenco, Early Music  and many more other events, workshops, masterclasses and even film.   The Festival will cut across genres – headline acts vary from Martin Carthy – one of folk music’s greatest innovators – to Vladislav Blaha the Czech classical maestro – to the amazing 6 piece TG Collective who play mixed jazz, gypsy and flamenco – to a Polish Guitar ensemble who will bring a string quartet to play with them!