News Archive
Seasonal opportunities to play music (2009)
Museum of British Folklore to visit Traditional Music Day
Vaughan Williams in the East event
EATMT patron honoured
Traditional Music on TV Autumn 2007
North End Voices (King's Lynn)
Fundraising appeal for Stepdance DVD
These photographs show just a fraction of what went on at the final concert of this project, held in Cottenham Village College, near Cambridge,
in November. What you can’t see is the sixty children who performed, or the further hundred or more children who had taken part in the
workshops through October and November. What you can’t hear is the glee in the voices of the seven year-olds singing The Row of Pins or
the passion of the twelve year-olds singing about the threat of the dykes giving way and communities being flooded, or the emotion in the
voices of the adults as they sang The Hungry Army - a song as full of meaning today as when Charlotte Dann sang it a hundred years ago. The remit of the project was to look at the theme of evolution through local folksongs, which gave our two inspirational workshop leaders
plenty of scope to investigate the local repertoire and to dream up ways of letting these songs be moulded in the hands of a new community
of singers. Chris Coe and Mary Humphreys achieved this balance brilliantly, and a packed audience for the final concert were able to see the results alongside other aspects of the local musical traditions: dulcimer playing and stepdancing. The Cottenham Local History Society
also contributed by showing a slide show of old photographs. The project was produced in partnership with the Fen Edge Community
Association, the Cambridge Music Festival and Start Arts, with funding from Awards for All and South Cambridgeshire council.
Photos courtesy of Start-Arts.
Left to right: the adult singing group led by Chris Coe, steppers Percy & Doreen West with Old Hat Concert Party, Anahata and Mary Humphreys.
Seasonal opportunities to play music
Two opportunities for the musicians amongst you to come and join in some outdoor festivities! On Saturday 21st November, there’s a celebration of Suffolk’s St Edmund in Stowmarket, when we will be playing some local traditional tunes. The tunes are posted here, and anyone is welcome to come and join in for half-an-hour from 1.30 to 2pm. Katie Howson will be leading this event. On Wednesday 2nd December, we will be playing Christmas carols for the Combs Ford (nr Stowmarket) Christmas Tree switch-on from about 5.15. Again, a list of carols is posted here, and all are welcome to come and play along. Katie Howson and Maggie Moore will be leading this event. Please give us a ring on 01449 771090 or email us if you’d like to take part, so we know how many to expect. Do come and join us, we’d like to have lots of people along to make it a really jolly event!
Dance House opening - come and ceilidh on 10th October!
Dance East celebrates the opening of the new multi-million development - the Jerwood Dance House on Ipswich Waterfront with a weekend of open, participatory events in October. The East Anglian Traditional Music Trust is proud to be part of this event, with two spots on the afternoon of Saturday 10th October promoting traditional dance. The KQ Trio will be playing for some ceilidh dancing, Simon Ritchie will give a demonstration of local stepping styles and there may even be time to get the jig dolls dancing too! We're keen to encourage more people to take part in ceilidh dancing, and to attend local events such as the regular dances held at Sproughton and further afield, so this should be a great opportunity to get more people involved. Mini-ceilidhs at 2.30-3.00 and 4.30-5.00. Morris dancing during the afternoon too, plus a chance to look round the new building, inspect the new cafe, studio and performance spaces.
Museum of British Folklore touring exhibition
to visit Traditional Music Day
The fabulous, innovative and quirky Museum of British Folklore touring
exhibition will be visiting Traditional Music Day at the Museum of East
Anglian Life on Saturday 5th September. It's the only visit to Suffolk!
The exhibition is housed in a caravan, and is the brainchild of Simon
Costin, who is using it as a way of raising awareness of the need for
a permanent national museum of folklore.
For an idea of what to expect, and a fascinating look at the customs
and traditions of the UK, visit the website at
www.museumofbritishfolklore.com/collect.html
Click here for more Traditional Music Day 2009 details.
Wednesday July 15th 7.30-9.30pm
Museum of East Anglian Life, Stowmarket
Welcome to the ceilidh!
To celebrate the arrival of the DanceEast Spiegeltent at the Museum of East Anglian Life, EATMT is hosting an early evening dance event. With live ceilidh band Katie's Quartet and caller Bobby Ritchie, this event is for people who fancy trying out some fun English-style ceilidh dancing. This style of dance, which can be found at community barn dances and funky festivals up and down the land is great fun for all ages, and is easy once you've got a few basic ideas sorted out. Bobby Ritchie will help you understand the basic moves and the band will help lift your feet and your heart. Open to all - most of the dances need a partner, but you don't have to come with a partner - this can be a good way to meet people in a very relaxed setting. It's also good exercise of course! See DanceEast programme for details of times etc, which will also be posted here when we have them. (The programme suggests it's a band called Ceilidh for Kids - it's not, and it's not an event specifically aimed at children, although they are welcome.)
This year was the tenth annual melodeon workshop day in Suffolk, and to celebrate asked back tutors from the first two events - Tony Hall and John Kirkpatrick, as well as our first Irish tutor, Con O’Drisceoil from County Cork.
It was followed this year, by another EATMT innovation - a day course on how to maintain and carry out simple repairs on your melodeon.
Photos and a report to follow soon!
Suffolk singer Geoff Ling died on Monday 16th February, aged 92. He died peacefully after a few months of poor health. The funeral is at Blaxhall Church on Tuesday 24th February at 2pm. For more information about Geoff as a singer, see our Profile pages - Geoff Ling: a personal portrait
Walberswick, near Southwold, Suffolk, Sunday 8th February
This event is now sold out.
After contributing a talk on the folk-song collecting activities of the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams to an event held by the English Folk Dance and Song Society in London in October, it was clear that we have all the ingredients for a really interesting event here in the eastern counties, and so we decided to bring the performers from that day together with Sue Cubbin from the Essex Sound Archive and singers Adrian May and Elaine Barker, who worked on an event in Peldon in Essex earlier this year. Talks will be given by Sue Cubbin (‘Vaughan Williams & Essex Folksong’), Mary Humphreys (‘Vaughan Williams in Cambs: Deciphering the Manuscripts’) and Katie Howson (‘Vaughan Williams - Then and Now: Collecting and Communities in Norfolk and Suffolk’). The talks, illustrated with various images and excerpts from some of the songs, will be followed by a concert with songs from Mary & Anahata, Sue, Adrian & Elaine and Chris Coe.
Click here for more details of the event.
In October 2008 we completed the second Melodeon
Makers course. Ten people each made their own one-row melodeon, to very
high specifications, with beautifully crafted components. It took only seven
days - and some late nights! We hope to run further such courses in the future, as we
seem to have generated lots of interest.
To see photographs of the 2008 Melodeon Makers course led by Emmanuel Pariselle
in October 2008,
click here.
Our next publishing project is a DVD about the region’s stepdance tradition. We have started an appeal for funds to help us produce a professional quality product that will include archive clips from various sources, together with interviews and footage of some of the current crop of dancers.
For further details of this appeal, click here.
In June 2008, a group of family, friends and folk music aficianados gathered in the small Norfolk coastal village of Winterton to celebrate the life of Sam Larner (below left), a fisherman and singer who had a huge influence on folk singers such as Martin Carthy.
Martin wrote a piece on Sam for EATMT - Personal Profile no. 7.
The Great Yarmouth & District Archaeological Society had arranged for a “blue plaque” to be fixed to the wall of Sam’s cottage in Bulmer Lane, and we arranged for singer Ian Prettyman (below, in front of plaque) and stepdancer (and fisherman) Richard Davies (below, right, dancing for BBC Look East cameraman) to be on hand to mark the occasion in suitable style.
Sam’s songs were heard again during a commemoration in the Church, and then, as Sam would surely have appreciated, we repaired to the ‘Fishermen’s Return’ for more songs and music.
Congratulations from all at EATMT to one
of our patrons, Gloria Buckley, who received
an MBE in October 2008 for her work in
community relations.
Gloria and husband Trevor have been involved
in the running of three Traveller sites in the
eastern region, and she has proved an
inspiration to many people.
To find out more about our patrons, directors and board, click here.
Traditional Music on TV Autumn 2007
Some of you will no doubt remember the well loved Anglia TV series, Bygones. Well, it’s back on your screens this Autumn, made by an independent team, but with one of the presenters from the old series, Eddie Anderson, in charge. Eddie contacted us early this year, and the results can be seen in the eastern region through November and December. A feature on stepdancing has already been screened, but look out for singer Ray Hubbard (22nd November), sea songs (6th December) and dulcimers (13th December). If you enjoy it, please tell Anglia TV, as we hope they will commission a further series and include more music. Eddie is so keen, he has even taken up the melodeon!
In June 2007, the English Folk Dance And Song Society celebrated their 75th anniversary by awarding seventy five Anniversary Awards.
We were delighted to be nominated, and the Directors, John & Katie Howson went along to Cecil Sharp House in June to receive our certificate. The award was given for enthusing others to participate in traditional music, song and dance and making a significant contribution to the field of research.
For the third year, we have been working on song
activities in Kings Lynn, and this summer’s project has been fantastic. We were
approached by BBC Radio Norfolk to participate in their Celebrate North End oral
history and community project, and were delighted to be able to provide schools
and adult song workshops which contributed towards a live event, a radio
documentary and a fascinating feature on the BBC website at
www.bbc.co.uk/norfolk/local_radio/northenders/
For further details, see the community projects section of this website.
As part of the project, we put together an exhibition of photographs and information, including some original research into the singers, carried out specifically for this project. We have put this together in a spiral-bound booklet called North End Voices. For further information, click here.
The text of the research carried out for the North End Voices exhibition is now available online: click here. A page on this website links all the research content of the site - if you're after information about material, instruments, tunes, songs, dance and traditional performers, start here! This aspect of the website will be regularly updated with new information.
The Ship Inn in Blaxhall has had a long tradition of music-making, and was made famous in the 1950s through a short film, 'The Barley Mow', mad by Peter Kennedy and the BBC, which featured local singers such as Bob Hart and Cyril Poacher who both made LPs for the Topic label in the 1970s.
Through the 1970s, 80s and much of the 90s, the pub, particularly under the ownership of Jim and Sue Grubbs, continued to be a centre for singing, stepdancing and music, with Oscar Woods being the resident melodeon player for many years, and Bank Holiday Mondays being the notable days for gatherings.
In more recent years the Ship was run by people less committed to traditional pub life, and the place seemed rarely to be open, let alone the kind of place where singing and stepping was welcomed.
We, and many other people both locally and nationally, are relieved and delighted that the pub is now under new ownership, and that music and singing is now definitely welcome there again! On Easter Monday 2007, well over a hundred people gathered to celebrate with songs, music and stepping, and the Ship felt well and truly 'launched' once more!
Update Easter 2009: the Ship is still going strong, and has regular music and singing sessions and events throughout the year!
We were thrilled to be able to offer a unique opportunity in the UK in March 2007. Between March 25th and 30th, eight people joined a course taught by French instrument-maker and musician, Emmanuel Pariselle, to make their own high-quality melodeon.
Click here for further details.
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