Join Ríoghnach and Ellis to learn more about singing in the folk style and to find out how to accompany folk songs on guitar.
Ríoghnach will guide you through a selection of songs of her choosing teaching you about ornamentation and vocal technique along the way. Ellis will teach you how to back songs with a guitar, including choice of chordal harmony and fingerstyle technique.
These are complementary facets of folk music, so this workshop is open to you if you are interested in either singing or accompanying, or indeed both. The three hour interactive folk music workshop will culminate in a short recital session.
Ríoghnach Connolly grew up surrounded by a rich musical familial heritage and through Armagh Pipers’ Club in Armagh City, in the northeast of Ireland. Now based in Manchester, she is a professional vocalist, flautist, lyricist, workshop facilitator and musical activist. She has toured internationally and extensively, performing and recording in bands The Breath (Real World Records), HoneyFeet (Wah Wah 45’s) Band of Burns (Órd Bán) and Afro Celt Sound System (ECC). Ríoghnach has a worldwide publishing deal with Real World Records as a writer and currently holds the title of BBC Radio 2’s Folk Singer of the Year.
Ríoghnach Connolly and Ellis Davies have been playing together for nearly 20 years – as long as long as they have been a couple. Together they have graced stages as far away as Brazil and Singapore, and recorded under Ríoghnach’s name, as festival favourites Honeyfeet and as Beware Soul Brother, along with Mendi Singh.
As a duo, they are unencumbered with the need to stick to one stylistic path and instead weave influences from folk, soul, hiphop, jazz and blues together to create an eclectic and intricate sound.
