Thanks to generous funding from Youth Music, taking part in each Singing Saturday is only £10 - or just £5 for children of full time students or people receiving income-related benefit. The Singing Saturdays will all be held from 10.30am to 3.30pm. Participants should bring a packed lunch, and drinks will be provided. People wishing to take part can just come along up on the day or places can be booked in advance by calling Wren Music on 01837 53754 or eMail. More information> (PDF file)

The Steampacket Sessionband play jigs & reels from Ireland & Scotland and include Irish and Scottish traditional musicians Kenny Monro and Gris Sanderson (fiddle), Deirdre Harnedy (Irish flute), Ciaran Byrne (bouzouki) & Louis Bingham (tenor banjo and bodhran).

Samuel Yeboah & the Unitytrain will perform drumming, song & dance from West Africa, and a donation from the proceeds will go to Samuel Yeboah's Ghanaian charity Project Okurase. For more information please telephone 01803864286 or eMail

Tickets cost just £7.50, including a ploughman’s supper, and, keeping costs down, it is suggested that you bring your own drinks. Tickets are available from Nobby Stoneham on 07855 584552, Lee Lodge on 01271 883875 or in person from Pets’ Pantry, High Street, Combe Martin. There may be tickets available at the door, but no guarantees! If you haven’t seen the show, don’t miss this last chance!

Just so that you have some idea of what you’d be getting:–

This Farming Life ~ and what others have said
This Farming Life was commissioned by the North Devon rural touring scheme, Village Voice, and was specifically designed for rural touring schemes – the emphasis being on rural! The show integrates archive film and traditional song together in an innovative way, the content of each medium illuminating the other. This Farming Life combines images and words about farming and rural life from as early as the 1920s through to the 1970s.

From heavy horses, through early traction, the drift from the land, rural industries, and much more, the shows includes interviews with farming people, documentary extracts, silent archive footage, tunes, songs and readings. Here are early television news features, extracts from commissioned films, silent film, folk songs, modern songs and text extracts all combining in an evening that produces everything from chuckles to belly laughs, stirs memories, educates incomers, highlights value systems and yet can send an old horseman into a reverie of nostalgia or stimulate discussion about ‘then and now’.

But this is not a film evening with a live sound-track. Although some film items and song items stand on their own within the context of the show, at other times silent film, music and song are fully integrated, the song illustrating the film content and the film reciprocating for the song, leading to a complex audio-visual experience that is unusual and stimulating.

Shammick Acoustic has been fortunate enough to engage the skills of the wonderful Bonnie Shaljean to give a half-day workshop/recital on “The Music of O’Carolan and other Celtic harpers” before her concert in Combe Martin, North Devon . 

This gives us a once-in-a-blue-moon chance to hear this internationally recognised expert on the Celtic harp, its music, and the old composers and players.  Since she stopped touring the circuit in England, Bonnie has been living and teaching in Cork.  Don’t miss this rare opportunity to hear her and explore this extraordinary aspect of the traditional music of these islands.

If you’re taking the opportunity to come to the workshop, it’s worth staying on for the concert in the evening.  Bonnie was born in America, but her love of the Celtic harp brought her first to London, where she worked with the great Irish performer Packie Byrne, then to Ireland where she teaches at the Cork School of Music, as well as running her own publishing company for harp music.  She is an accomplished musician who plays piano as well as harp, sings and composes music, and is an acknowledged expert on Celtic harpists and their music.  She is currently working on a historical research project which will include a CD of traditional and other 19^th Century music.  A beautiful singer of a wide variety of songs with an engaging personality, she will delight all those who love Irish music or the harp.

The workshop is subsidised by Shammick Acoustic.  Places may be limited and are allocated on a first come/first serve basis – early booking is advised! Booking Form>