Duo perform folk evening

The pair is one of the most celebrated folk couplings of their generation with the duo having won three BBC Radio 2 Folk awards together, including ‘Best Duo’ twice and the ‘Horizon Award’; Nancy herself has won another four individually, including ‘Best Original Song’ in 2011 with Queen of Waters.

Nancy was born in London but now lives in Sheffield and is the daughter of London-born singer Sandra Kerr, a familiar face to many as presenter of the children’s show ‘Bagpuss’ and Northumbrian piper, Ron Elliott.

Nancy became prominent in the 1990s when she joined a musical partnership with Eliza Carthy, a fellow fiddle player and has since created music with her mother, folk/pop group Epona, and many more.

Already a respected interpreter of traditional material, Nancy’s emergence as a writer of rare style has drawn comparison to William Blake in her reawakening of a radical folk mythology as a backdrop for contemporary narratives about love and conflict, motherhood, migration, hardship and jubilation, and the tensions between rural and urban life.

James Fagan was born in Sydney, Australia and with his parents and his younger sister, Kate, formed The Fagans and toured the Australian folk scene since the early 1980s.

James joined The Hooligans in 1994, where he was introduced to the Irish Bouzouki, which has now become his main instrument but singing remains his foremost musical love!

Nancy married James in 2007 after they met while he was on holiday in England.

The pair has now taken the folk scene by storm with their music, being described as ‘two of the brightest stars to have emerged from the nebula of talented young musicians that has swirled around the universe of the British folk scene over the past decade’ by The Living Tradition.

Tickets for the show can be found online at http://www.helmsleyarts.co.uk/whats-on/nancy-kerr-and-james-fagan or from the Box Office on 01439 771 700.