From: "EFDSS Marketing" <marketing_at_efdss_dot_org>

Date: 19 March 2009 11:18:33 GMT

Subject: EFDSS Press Release: St George's Day Special celebration at Cecil Sharp House 230409

St George’s Day Special

Thursday 23 April 2009

Performance: 7.30pm

Tickets: £10

Ticket office: 020 7485 2206 / www.wegottickets.com

www.efdss.org

Cecil Sharp House, 2 Regent’s Park Road, Camden Town, London NW1 7AY

The English Folk Dance and Song Society and fRoots magazine present a celebratory gig at Cecil Sharp House on St George's Day, Thursday 23rd April 2009.

The event showcases some of the great English folk artists now emerging from outside the established folk scene - Ian King, Nancy Wallace, Mary Epworth and Olivia Chaney - all of whom will be amongst the subjects of a cover feature on the May issue of fRoots magazine published on the same day.

Headliner Ian King, looked after by Bobby Marshall (manager of Asian Dub Foundation), produced by Adrian Sherwood and has Little Axe’s Skip McDonald in his sometime band, plays English traditional songs with a reggae music hall infused brass section - Shirley Collins is amongst the confessed big fans. A performance from Nancy Wallace hot on the heels of her well-received new solo album Old Stories is on leave from singing with The Memory Band. Mary Epworth was considered by many to have been one of the hits of the South Bank's Sandy Denny tribute last December and her single Saddle Song has caused quite a stir. Olivia Chaney is a songstress of great power and magnitude, having crossed the bridge from classical music to traditional song, leaving all the affectations of that idiom behind and incorporating a stylish and inventive blend of folk and new world – old world.

London’s most enigmatic and playful storyteller Debs Newbold will shake down the evening with a journey into the world of St George and his many adventures, and the Suffolk Howler Mummers will provide crazed, fearsome and mythic ritual mayhem performing the perennial and seasonal mummers play for your health and prosperity.

Rising choruses will be delivered by the resident Cecil Sharp House Community Choir joining up with Hackney’s very own Wing It Singers for English and Georgian ‘calls to order’.