Hello!
It’s half way through May!! The year has flown by and my news years resolution to make sure I blogged more fell by the way side early on! We’ve just spent the last few days sorting out our mailing list. We’ve spent many years building up our mailing list and we’re resigned to the fact that the new ruling means we’re going to lose quite a few emails, but we hope we’ve done everything we need to do!

So if you fancy helping us out and updating your details that would be amazing! Or if you’re not subscribed, then we’d love it if you did! As a thank you for updating you’ll be sent through to a page with a free music download!

Click Here to go to our signup page!

We’ve got a busy summer ahead of us, but we’ll tell you more about that in a different post!
:))
Vicki & Jonny
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Hello!
It’s been a snowy old week. We’d much rather be gigging, but the snow gods had other ideas! Luckily we managed a performance of Wind in the Willows on Tuesday here at home in Cressing before the snow hit. We made it to Solihull last night, but unfortunately the audience didn’t, so it was cancelled at the last minute as Solihull got itself gridlocked. This show has been rescheduled for two weeks time. We managed to make our escape and make it home. Tonight and tomorrow nights shows have been rescheduled to the end of April. Funnily enough it’s ended up on the same weekend that we’ve had one of December shows rescheduled too – complete coincidence. Let’s hope it doesn’t snow then! So the new re-reschedule looks like this:

14.03.18 – Wind in The Willows, ***  at The Core Theatre , Solihull
27.04.18 – Wind in The Willows, *** Broughton Parish Room, Wetwood, Staffs
28.04.18 – Moreton Village Hall, Moreton, Staffs (Duo Show)
29.04.18 – Wind in The Willows, *** Hemingby, Lincs

But we have a busy March ahead of us starting down in Totnes on Wednesday. The Met office assures us it’s going to have warmed up by then! So here you have our movements for March:

04.03.18 – Wind in The Willows, *** All Hallows Lady Bay, West Bridgford, Notts
08.03.18 – Totnes Folk Club, Totnes, Devon
10.03.18 – Halsway Manor,  Somerset
14.03.18 – Wind in The Willows, ***Solihull
24.03.18 – Smörgåsballad at Halsway Manor, Somerset

We hope you’re all warm and safe! See you on the road!
:))
Vicki & Jonny
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Hello!
Midsummer is here! The year has gone by so fast it’s unreal!

We’ve had some excellent adventures so far and have more to come!  Our biggest adventure has to be going to Moscow! Starting the Saturday of the weekend was us playing for the Dartford Spring Fayre. We often don’t get to see pictures taken of us unless we spot them on Facebook, so we were delighted to be sent a drawing of us in the park. Amazing! Thank you for sending it! We finished our lunchtime set there and headed straight off to the airport to get to Moscow!  We were there as part of Daria Kulesh’s Long Lost Home Band. Because of other

commitments we were only in Russia for the 34 hours for the concert, but we had a nice view of the city in the taxi ride home after the concert! It was an amazing experience and loved playing in the Russian band too playing Ingush music. Maybe it’ll happen again some day!

Since then our feet have barely touched the ground! We were picked up from the airport by John so we could do more recording for Purcell’s Polyphonic Party, from there straight to Chester Folk Festival, Maghull Folk Club, Red Lion Folk Club (to support and see our friends Cloudstreet), Rhyl Folk Club then up to Cumbria to rehearse as seriouskitchen.

Time to breath!

We’re hoping to have the PPP album ready for Sidmouth – but we think that we’ll be doing pre-orders there. Sometimes you can’t rush these things – but we are in the mixing stage now!

So where are we over the summer? We’ll be mixing and learning and writing music, but in between those times you’ll find us here:
01.07.17 – Bury Folk Festival – afternoon concert
01.07.17 – Kimpton Folk Festival – evening concert
07-09.07.17 – Furness Folk Festival, Furness Cumbria
28 – 30.07.17 – Festival at the Edge, Shropshire
04-11.08.17 – Sidmouth Folk Week, also as PPP

Hope to see you at one of these places. I’ll leave you with a little youtube video celebrating midsummer – playing nyckelharpa outside in the garden!
:))
Vicki & Jonny
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Hello!
May already?? The time has just flown by! We’ve got a few weeks at home at the moment, but we’re working our little socks off! Still recording the Purcell’s Polyphonic Party album. Jonny has been working incredibly hard on this! We’re playing for the Saturday night dance at Chester Folk Festival, so we finished putting a dance tune list together and are all ready to go for that.

We’ve had an unexpected gig come in. It’s not your normal Vicki Swan & Jonny Dyer gig, but we’re both involved. We’re off to a secret location for a secret gig. Well it’s not really secret, but it’s certainly going to be an adventure! We’re off to Russia to play as part of Daria Kulesh’s Long Lost Home Band. The Gradsky Hall in Moscow. It’s been a frantic couple of weeks sorting out visas and travel and writing new parts for different instruments! More anon!

:))
Vicki & Jonny
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Happy Easter everyone!
As usual time has got away from us and I’ve not blogged in a couple of months! We’ve got a couple of gigs coming up at the end of the month, this will be here before you know it!

24.04.17 – Grand Union Folk Club, Barrow upon Soar, Loughborough
28.04.17 – Watford Folk Club, Watford

We’ve been busy recording the new Purcell’s Polyphonic Album, it always takes longer than you think! We’ve had another review through for Paper of Pins, from EDS. Click on the picture on the left to read it!

Next month we have more Wind in the Willows rehearsals and then we start to hit festival season!

🙂
Vicki & Jonny
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Hello!
We’re already into February and getting through that at an alarming rate! We’re off to the Cellar Upstairs in London on Saturday and Smörgåsballad in Abbots Langley on Sunday.

Then we are on the slippery slope of heading back to Halsway Manor on the 10th March. In-between then we’ve got gigs, rehearsals for Wind in the Willows, a  launch concert to prepare for with Daria Kulesh at Cecil Sharp House and more Smörgåsballads.

In all the spare time we’ve finally started recording the Purcell’s Polyphonic Party album.  You’ll have to watch this space for news of that when it arrives. At the moment Jonny is beavering away researching up speeds and numbers of times each tune needs to be played to make sure that not only is it fun to listen to, that it’s danceable too!

🙂
Vicki & Jonny
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Hello!
It’s finally out in the open! Our secret mission back in October was to be Swedish musicians for Holby City! We sat and watched the episode last night and in-between the guts and gore we had a lot of fun spotting us and our dancer friends. All four of our scenes were kept and all music we recorded was used. We were very happy that Fikavalsen was kept in, especially as we’ve released it as a single! The episode will be up on BBC iPlayer for the next month, so it’s not too late to watch us! We’re also the sound track to the behind the scenes video. You get to see a bit more of what we experienced that day. We’re very happy to say that the nyckelharpa is now well and truly introduced to the mainstream BBC1 TV audience.

This is what we played:
Bridal March: Jämtlands  Brudmarsch
Recessional: Polska efter Byss-Calle Nr. 32
First Waltz: Fikavalsen
Dance: Härjedalsschottish

It was a really fun week, especially fun as we do this for weddings anyway, just not quite so dramatically!
The BBC has a behind the scenes video – this sums up our week on Holby City to a T. 😀

We’re at the very end of the trailer:

Enjoy!
🙂
Vicki & Jonny

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