Tuesday, February 05, 2013

Woodford Folk Festival 2012 - other highlights

Some of my personal highlights as an audience member of this year's Woodford Folk Festival...  Unfortunately I don't have any photos of my number 1 highlight - Vince Jones. I've loved Vince's music since I was a teenager but this was only the second time I'd seen him play live. During the set he saw rising Australian star Katie Noonan in the audience and called her to the stage to sing "It's the Power of Love, not the Love of Power" with him. It was great to see the mutual respect between two great vocalists, old and young.


Welcoming ceremony

 Monica Singh - Odissi dance
 Arjun Raina - Kathakali dance
 Black Hat Dance by Tenzing Yeshi

 Bobby Singh (tabla), Pt Rabindra Goswami (sitar), Vinod Prasanna (bansuri)
Graceful dance by Julian Wong with Nicholas Ng (erhu)
 Festival regular and musical genius, Mal Webb. "Rooster Tree" and "I don't want to give it up" were just fantastic.
 The Dream of Zedkat Nabu, featuring my old friend (and former tabla student) Velvet Pesu, who not only sang but also designed the costumes. One of the best uses of the Woodford lake ever - the 4 singers were floating on little mobile islands so their amazing costumes were reflected in the lake. I can imagine those 4 singers had a ball in rehearsals too!

 Circle of Rhythm - brilliant percussion as always, and nice to see Ben Walsh introducing melodic (yet still percussive) elements with santoor.


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