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Cardrona Folk Festival 2009
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PAT SMITH and NED CLAMP |
MARCUS TURNER |
DAVE HART |
Another
great festival last year, with the side splitting humour of Fred Wedlock, the
sensitivity of Valdy and the guitar wizardry of Graham (Fingers) Wardrop making
it what many felt to be one of the best yet. But we say that every year. Our 34th
festival this year promises to be quite different but equally enjoyable, with a
great line-up of guests. As always it will be held at the old Cardrona Hall and
surrounding reserve from Friday 23rd to Monday 26th October 2009. This year’s
confirmed guests are:
PAT SMITH and NED
CLAMP (Llantrisant, Wales)
Anyone who has met Pat on her three previous tours of New
Zealand as part of the duo Calennig will never forget her impish sense of
humour, her vibrant concertina, her wonderful dance calling and the playing of
the spoons taken to new heights of visual artistry! And not ignoring her excellent singing in both Welsh and
English either. Pat runs the best and
longest running folk club in Wales at Llantrisant – who incidentally are unofficially “twinned” with us. So this will be a welcome return to her
other home. With Pat will be her new
musical partner of several years Ned Clamp – a fine guitarist, singer and
harmonica player, who originally came from England but who saw the light and
moved to the friendly valleys of South Wales. Together they perform a variety of traditional Welsh and other
tunes and sing songs in both languages – sometimes even at the same time.
They
will be running the Saturday night Twmpath (a Welsh ceilidh) in which the Welsh
dances are always great fun to participate in. They will also be doing an afternoon concert as a duo and we
certainly won’t let Pat get away without another of her wonderful spoons
workshops. Everybody bring a pair of
spoons – preferably EPNS soup or desert spoons – tea spoons are definitely too
small and plastic ones don’t work!
MARCUS
TURNER (Dunedin)
One of New
Zealand’s finest multi instrumentalists and superb songwriter, it is always a
pleasure to invite Marcus back to Cardrona, where he first played 33 years
ago. A regular member of “The Chaps”
and various other groups, it is when playing solo that in my opinion you see
and hear the very best of Marcus’s talents.
In January this year he absolutely stole the concerts he was in at the
Auckland Folk Festival with several stunning new compositions and as a result completely sold out of
CD’s. As well as presenting songs in
concert spots on his own, Marcus will
be using his instrumental skills as part of the Twmpath band with Pat and Ned
on Saturday night. The very best of
New Zealand folk music, this guy is world class!
DAVE HART (Christchurch)
Our much loved
melodeon player and performer of traditional songs and poems, often of a very
humorous nature, music hall ballads, morris dance tunes and just about
everything else, absolute variety is what you get with Dave Hart. He is a regular festival goer both at our
festival and at most of the others around the country, just for the pleasure of
being a part of our very special “folkie” family, so we thought it was time to
feature him as a guest. Like Marcus
he too will be an integral part of the Welsh tympath band on Saturday night. He will also be doing a concert of his own
and hosting the acapella harmony session in the church on Sunday.
As always there will be
several blackboard concerts, so that all singers and musicians - and children -
can let us hear what they can do. And of course no Cardrona festival would be
complete without our traditional PERFORMANCE
POETS session on Saturday
morning. Each year it is getting longer and better and the theme being picked
up by more and more festivals around the country. By popular request we will again have our unaccompanied harmony
session in the wee church on Sunday morning.
We have plenty of space and time for jamming sessions. Remember to bring earplugs if you don’t
want to hear music in the small hours – after all, this is a folk music
festival, and there is always time for Just One More Chorus.
The cost for a weekend ticket (Friday to Monday) will be $70 for adults, with secondary children at $25 (wee ones are free). Bring everything you need, as all we supply is a flat (and usually dry) paddock, a couple of taps, fine weather and heaps of music and fun. The new luxury toilets are now working perfectly but the historic longdrops have also been recently renovated for festival-goers who suffer from nostalgia or who don’t like queuing! This is a self-catering festival but meals are available, at a price, up the road at the Cardrona Hotel, along with luxury accommodation. We regret that the ski chalets next door to the site are now almost fully booked already but there are still rooms available in the luxury “townhouses” up past the hotel. Other affordable accommodation is available in Wanaka, 25 kms away, along with a wide choice of restaurants and cafes. Best book now though. Showers are also available at nominal cost at the Wanaka motor camp, so if you go down to top up liquid supplies, take your towel.
Pre-registration
is not yet necessary, though if the festival gets any more popular this may
have to come one day.
See
you there.
Martin
Curtis
For
further information and bookings contact
Martin
& Kay Curtis ; Cardrona : RD1 : Wanaka.
Tel/fax : 03 443 8152.
Email:
martincurtis(at)clear.net.nz (you need
to substitute the @ sign, to discourage spammers!)
Website: www.martincurtis.co.nz
Last
Updated: 5th August 2009