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Paul Hutchinson, Karen Wimhurst and Hannah Cumming return to Whitchurch as PAGODA PROJECT. We are delighted they will be performing for us in the Parish Hall, after their previously planned gig in February had to be cancelled for medical reasons.

Paul and Karen came together through their love of traditional music cut through with experimentation, boldness, humour and risk. Their first duo album Coracle had five-star reviews and led to them touring widely across UK and European Festivals. Both composers and improvisers, they now celebrate over twenty years of close collaboration and original music playing as a duo and with other bands and large-scale projects.

Expect ethereal to turn gutsy, passion to be tempered by a good laugh and a tide of improvisation which means no two evenings are ever the same. Paul Hutchinson is a BBC Folk Award Best Live Artist nominee with Belshazzar’s Feast, a much-feted accordion player and teacher. He’s equally at home on the concert stage, playing dance tunes for enthusiastic revellers or running workshops. His previous collaborations with Hoover the Dog, Pagoda Project and The Maniacs produced albums and performances that drew five-star reviews.

Karen Wimhurst is a widely commissioned composer ranging from chamber works to music theatre and large-scale, collaborative productions. Eclectic in nature, her own distinctive music manifests diverse traditional and jazz influences alongside a strong grounding in contemporary classical music. Latest works include Synthetica, an online opera in collaboration with MoDiP; Heart of the Matter, a bijoux chamber opera for Bass and piano featuring in Tete a Tete opera festival 2024; Freedoms for mixed choir and cello; a Song for Dorset one of the featured composers in the lockdown A Song For Us project and Jump, a solo work for clarinets, insect and amphibian sounds, featured at the British Library event Small but Perfectly Formed hosted by Martha Kearney and touring 2024 with an accompanying video by film maker Sonia Killmann.

Hannah Cumming is an enthusiastic and virtuosic fiddle-player and singer who performs with oomph and passion. Fiddle-singing, the skill of playing and singing and the same time, was a natural progression from a girl who sang everywhere (much to her family and friends’ annoyance) and learnt the fiddle from age 11. After graduating from Falmouth University studying BA(Hons) Music she became a solo artist, duo performer (with Jon Dyer), a ceilidh caller and played with several different bands. These include Crowdy-Kit, the ceilidh band, with Matt Norman and Jon Dyer, and other bands from Klezmer/Balkan Music, to Jazz, to Pop-Folk, to Trad Folk, plus many genres in between. Hannah’s most recent big achievement, and unforgettable experience, was being an actor-musician for the professional UK touring musical ‘Fisherman’s Friends: The Musical’ from the end of 2022 to end of May 2023, with the opportunity to go to Toronto, Canada for 2 months with the show.

We are very pleased to have added local band Guinea Lane Saxophone Quartet to the bill. Guinea Lane was founded in 2018 by four friends from very diverse musical backgrounds. In the last few years, they have followed the “road less travelled” and focussed on folk music of the British Isles, playing original, dynamic and idiosyncratic arrangements and have built a repertoire of wholly original pieces. You may have heard Guinea Lane at both Whitchurch Folk Festivals, at local community events or on the big stages at festivals including Chippenham and Sidmouth, with their original and distinctive sound.

Admission:  Adults £18 (+ booking fee £1.25)   Under 18yrs £9 (+ booking fee £1).  To purchase tickets follow this link