28-Jun-09 Durham Music Festival Hiring Concert

For a number of years now Fred Brierley, stalwart folkie from Croxdale, has organised the Durham Traditional Music Festival. This is a three day event which always takes place at the end of June. We went along again this year to take part in the Sunday afternoon 'Hiring Concert' - we had taken part last year too. The event was run by Jim Bainbridge, a traditional style singer who accompanies himself on the button accordion and he got proceedings promptly underway at 1:00pm with his own 20-minute spot.

The acts, in order of performance, were Phil Graham, Acoustica, Makepeace & Brindle, Chris Kelly, jiva and Terry Gorman. Then Jim Bainbridge returned to finish off the afternoon with a further 20-minute spot.

For our slot we played:

• Diffferent Dreams (jiva)
• When (jiva)
• Louise (Paul Siebel)
• Sonny (Ron Hynes)
• Some Way Home (jiva)

We were asked to do one more and happily obliged with 'Back Home To You' (Allan Taylor).

It was a very warm afternoon, and the extractor fan churning away loudly and open windows made it difficult sometimes to hear everything clearly - there was no PA, so everyone played acoustically. Everyone performed well, and it was a good afternoon of mostly contemporary music with many numbers written by the performers.

We doubt there was much (if any) 'hiring' initiated by this concert, but it was an enjoyable way to catch up with friends and fellow performers.

Links
jiva website
jiva MySpace