The place to be for live music

Don’t believe us? Well, The Coal Porters, lead by Sid Griffin are widely regarded as the UK’s finest exponents of Bluegrass; Juan Martin consistently appears in the top five polls of the Best Guitarists in the World; Eliza Carthy is British Folk royalty, recognised as an exceptional artist in her own right – moving out from father Martin’s shadow; young guns Marcus Bonfanti and Oli Brown have both been referred to as the great future of British Blues; this mantle being handed to them by the likes of Paul Jones (appearing with The Blues Band), Martin Barre of Jethro Tull and Ashley Hutchings who founded three of the UK’s most significant folk acts including Fairport Convention, Steeleye Span and The Albion Band – he appears with his Rainbow Chasers, which also features Jo Hamilton, who astounded her audience at Arlington Arts last year with her own band.
Not only are there musical performances, the venue at Mary Hare also has two exceptional talks about legendary performers.
The first: Meetings with Remarkable Blues Men sees Dave Peabody returning with friend and pianist Bob Hall to discuss the lives and music of some of the giants of the traditional Blues artists.
They talk about and play songs from their meetings and work with the likes of John Lee Hooker, Howlin’ Wolf, Charlie Musselwhite and David ‘Honeyboy’ Edwards who Peabody appeared with at his performances at Arlington Arts in 2007 and 2008.
The event will be accompanied by a collection of photographs, taken by Dave Peabody, of the men that will be discussed.
The second talk comes from Bob Dylan’s most respected biographer Michael Gray, who wrote Song and Dance Man and The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia.
He will be using music samples, photography, personal stories and insight to explore how Dylan has used the poetry of traditional blues music to shape his own compositions and performance style.
All of this, plus even more music, comedy and theatre (as well as one or two surprises…) has established Arlington Arts as a venue of choice in West Berkshire and the fact that all of its profits go to Mary Hare, the national charity for young deaf people just makes it all the better.
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By Tony Trigwell-Jones