THIS year’s Grassington Festival which commences June 17 offers folk music fans a diverse range of contemporary folk music to choose from.

A collage of song, music, storytelling and personal testimony from the members of Schwa opens this year’s festival, in an innovative new work entitled Threshold.

Group members play piano, clarinet, saxophone, drums, ukulele, bouzouki, bass, percussion and accordion, as well as using live sampling. With influences from English parlour song, jazz, world and folk music they explore the themes of hospitality and our relationship with strangers. Reviews of Schwa’s new work have described Threshold as “a thought provoking reminder of humanity” and “a perfectly blended mixture of spoken word and beautiful music”.

For a more up-tempo evening look no further than Calan who play Saturday, June 18 at Grassington’s Festival Hall. This Welsh five piece band have created a repertoire of infectious rhythms and high voltage routines, made all the more fun and exciting by the percussive sound of Welsh clog dancing from group member Bethan Williams-Jones. The stunning use of instrumentation from fiddles to whistles, guitar, Welsh pipes, Welsh harp and even a traditional Welsh reed instrument called a pibgorn, has brought the group notice and acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic, with notable performances at Celtic Connections, the Royal Albert Hall and a live session on BBC Radio 2’s The Folk Show.

Last but by no means least, the opening night of Grassington’s Festival in the Field Marquee on June 28 headlines West Country folk singer, song writer and multi-instrumentalist, Seth Lakeman. Seth has successfully steered English folk into the mainstream over the last decade with his hi-energy performances and a series of best-selling albums, including the Mercury Music Prize nominated Kitty Jay, and Word of Mouth which entered the charts at No. 20 in 2014. Seth’s highly anticipated eighth album Ballads of the Broken Few is released later this year, produced by Ethan Jones who has worked previously with Kings of Leon, Joe Cocker and Laura Marling.

For tickets and further information please visit; www.grasington-festival.org.uk or telephone 01756 752691