Our third annual Oxford Folk Festival, still volunteer led and not-for-profit, will soon hit the city with its music, dancing, colour, and jingling of bells as the Morris dancers stroll around town. This year we have two major ticketed concerts at New Road Church off Bonn Square, and a much larger dance programme of exciting ceilidhs at which excellent bands of musicians will be playing. All these events are on sale, with information on our linktree and our website at oxfordfolkfest.org.uk.
As for the more informal ‘local’ venues and performances – over 80 local musicians, bands and choirs are now ready to perform, and they can be heard in any one of the ten central Oxford venues which generously give us houseroom during the festival weekend. A day-to-day running order of the local acts can be found under What’s On/Local Acts on our website.
Yes, on the weekend of 10th-12th April, folk musicians and dancers will once again be everywhere in the centre of Oxford. Our dancers will roam the city, pausing to demonstrate their skills at key locations including Broad Street, Bonn Square, St Giles, Radcliffe Square, and the Castle, while indoors you will find ceilidhs and Balfolk music with skilled callers who make the dances seem easy as well as fun. Meanwhile choirs, soloists, duos and bands perform in the Norrington Room in Blackwells, the Old Fire Station, Common Ground, the Westgate public Library, the Weston Library in the Bodleian and Modern Art Oxford. But the hub for all these venues is the Covered Market, where performances continue for all three days. The afternoons are the peak times for listeners to find these performers, but on Saturday 11th at 7.30 we also hold a free evening concert in the Covered Market, with the help of the Market Tap. This year the Ock Street Band will headline.
We are keen supporters of Oxford’s ‘twin cities’ programme, and this April we are delighted to welcome Aisling, a folk band from Leiden, the oldest university city in Holland, to Oxford. They will be holding a special concert in St Matthews Church in Marlborough Road on the evening of Friday 10th, and the band will also feature in performances on Saturday 11th April at North Parade and the Covered Market, as well as on Sunday at Modern Art, Oxford. We hope people will make sure to catch them and cheer them on!
For the first time this year we have been given access to the Westgate Centre, where over 70 performances will take place in three locations - Leiden Square, the Roof Terrace and the special Buskstop, where weary shoppers can pause for a while and enjoy a musical respite from their busy days. On Saturday 11th April at noon in Leiden Square, we are holding a celebration of performers and dance, with a fanfare from Horns of Plenty to start the music for the day.
This year a number of workshops will be available, focusing on dance, instrumental music, choral and other voice work, and we are pleased to announce that some workshops are dedicated to young people and to those with special needs. They are ticketed and information in available on the website.
There’s plenty on offer and we hope to lift the spirits of any visitor to Oxford on our Oxford Folk Festival weekend.