Chris Foster and Bára Grímsdóttir (Special Event)

Traditional music from Iceland and England.Chris Foster is a master of his trade. Alongside Nic Jones, Dick Gaughan and June Tabor, he established himself in the 1970's as one finest interpreters of the traditional ballads of the British Isles. Chris grew up in Somerset, England, where he first heard and started singing traditional songs. Following a visual arts training he became a full-time musician, clocking up 8 years of continuous touring throughout Britain, Europe and North America. Along the way, he picked up musical influences and songs from traditional musicians in the coastal villages of East Anglia, intriguing and unusual songs from the manuscripts of the Victorian / Edwardian folk song collectors of his native West of England. Then in the 1980's he changed focus, dropping out of the folk scene and settling in Salisbury where he co-founded Mobile Arts, a mixed media community arts company. Using music, drama, visual arts, oral history and print, Mobile Arts established a reputation for exciting, original work, much of which researched, revived and re-interpreted the musical traditions and customs of the area. In the 1990's Chris moved to the midlands and cast it all back into the melting pot, re-emerging onto the folk scene with innovative visual and musical contemporary interpretations of English songs and traditions.Chris has a distinctive voice, deep and clear with a faint overlay of his native Somerset, and a vocal style that incorporates a subtle use of decoration with an intricate and exciting sense of rhythmic patterns. Underpinning it all is his on-stage persona, with his urbane wit and engaging enthusiasm for his music that draws the audience into his performance.B?ra Gr?msd?ttir is one of the finest interpreters of the traditional folk songs of Iceland. Her crystal clear voice is the perfect vehicle to carry the haunting and evocative melodies of what is perhaps one of the least known song traditions in Europe. With epic stories derived from the Sagas written by the early Viking settlers a thousand years ago and mysterious, ancient modal melodies reflecting the breathtaking, wild beauty of her native land, it is a very rich tradition which deserves to reach a much wider audience beyond Iceland's rocky shores.B?ra (pronounced Bow-rah) was born and spent her early years in the remote northern farming community of the Vatnsdalur Valley, near Blonduos until her family moved to Reykjavik. From her earliest years she grew up hearing her parents and grandparents singing the traditional Icelandic stemmur and rimur songs. B?ra has been singing in public since childhood. When she was twenty she made her first radio appearance singing Icelandic folksongs with her mother. Since then she has made many solo appearances on radio and TV.It was while B?ra was singing at the Baring-Gould Folk Festival in Devon, in October 2000 that Chris met her, and they started to explore the possibilities of combining his "open tuned English style" of guitar playing with the modal melodies of her traditional Icelandic songs. Each also performs separately: he in the traditions of his native England and she in the traditions of her native Iceland.