James Fagan/Jill Pidd @ The New Musical Traditions Club

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James Fagan is a highly regarded, award-winning Australian folk singer and multi-instrumentalist, perhaps best known for his thirty year career with Nancy Kerr. HIs repertoire includes traditional and contemporary folk songs from Austalia and the British Isles, many of which he learned from his family in Australia, The Fagans. He has also toured and recorded with Melrose Quartet, The James Brothers, Cara Dillon, Andy Irvine, and Alistair Hulett. He has been a core song tutor on the Newcastle Folk Degree for nearly two decades.
“Fagan is brilliant. His Australian heritage is sung with a poet’s grace, his eight-stringed bouzouki glistening as stories of leaving and returning, love and loss tumble from him.” Downend Folk and Routes

A deeply meaningful and dedicated singer of the tradition, Jill's powerful voice has an intense and uncompromising delivery coupled with a passionate respect of the ballad and story. A strong and frequently breathtaking singer, her rendering of traditional ballads with their strength of story has led to many superlatives.
Jill is also known to have been Fred Jordan's favourite woman singer. It was perhaps the most memorable - certainly the most difficult and emotional - performance of Jill's life to sing for Fred at his funeral in 2002. Additionally, she was proud to have toured as one of the Waterson's In the first half of the '90s - particularly on their USA tours.