REPORT

EATMT were delighted to be at FolkEast where we were set up in the Instrumental Area amongst our talented instrument makers.

We spent a full day rehearsing at Blaxhall Village Hall on Thursday 17th August where we (Alex and Nicky) were joined by our 9 musicians, tutors Finn Collinson, Emma Beach and Stu Hanna and our sound recordist/film maker Jake Lee Savage and our social media promoter Faye Gosling.

The first of our 2 Showcase Concerts with our young musicians as part of our Vaughan Williams’ Folk Project took place on Friday 18th August. The 400 seated Moot Hall was filled until it became standing room only. Nobody was quite expecting that sized audience and our wonderful musicians did not disappoint!

The performance was filmed and will be made available towards the end of the project. If you missed it and plan to join us at Traditional Music Day, then make this a “must see” event on the day! They perform again at 1pm at the John Peel Centre on Saturday 2nd September.

The work with our Showcase Musicians has been supported by FolkEast and the National Heritage Lottery Fund.

A short film (with thanks to Jake Lee Savage) of the project’s outreach into schools and local communities was shown daily at 2pm in the Vintage Mobile Cinema and proved to be so popular people had to be turned away. A longer version of this film will be shown at Traditional Music Day after the Showcase Performance and will be available to view once the VWF Project is complete in the autumn.

Our Showcase Musicians were officially involved with running a Youth Moot session at the end of the weekend but they made the most of the opportunities over the weekend and struck up an impromptu bar session on the Saturday night.

One of our young musicians, Abbey Thomas also performed in the Sanctuary on Friday late afternoon as one of the New Roots Finalists.

Later also on Friday afternoon the Trust supported the running of a Stepdance workshop with thanks to Ethan Beal, with wonderful musical support from Lindsay Want and Poppy Price-Dowhan and the 3rd FolkEast Stepdance Competition followed. Lindsay was MC for the competition, with Norfolk based melodeon player Alan Pitwood accompanying and Ethan Beal, Fiona Davies and Alex Bartholomew judging. We were very grateful to those keen work-shoppers who joined us and even more grateful to those who braved staying on to compete! Finbar Murphy was crowned best Newcomer, Linda from Hertfordshire was Judges’ Choice and Barry Mobbs, who was persuaded to dance solo (he ordinarily showcases dual Stepdancing with wife Monica), was the winner of the FolkEast Copper Kettle.

We took the opportunity to promote forthcoming Traditional Music Day and thank everyone who stopped by to say hello and have a chat over the weekend.

Thanks too to Mark, Tony, Nicky, Rob, Eammon and Alex for running the EATMT stall over the weekend and to the VWF team for pulling together and making the project finale so great and to Team Stepdance for creating another welcoming and good spirited Stepdance event!

As ever, our thanks go to Becky, John, Otis and the FolkEast Team for once again welcoming us at their wonderful festival.

Visit the Vaughan Williams’ Folk Project pages HERE for the podcasts and films linked to this report.