Shovel Dance Collective

Tickets £16 // Under 30 £6
Advance booking required
This concert will accommodate a mixture of seated and standing attendees, with seating allocated on a first-come, first-served basis on the day.

Doors: 7.30pm
Stage time: 8pm

Shovel Dance Collective:
Tom Hardwick-Allan trombone / harmonicas / assorted items
Mataio Austin Dean vocals / guitar
Nick Granata vocals / preacher’s organ
Daniel S. Evans guitar / cello
Joshua Barfoot percussion / hammered dulcimer / vocals
Alex Mckenzie bass clarinet / whistle / flute
Oliver Hamilton violin
Fidelma Hanrahan harp / low whistle
Jacken Elswyth banjo / shruti box

Click here to view programme note

The nine members of Shovel Dance Collective are united by their passion for the beauty, force and political charge of the traditional musics of Britain, Ireland and beyond. For this leaderless group, folk music is a living, communal activity rather than some archaeological artifact to be unearthed. Their arrangements emphasise the inviting nature of folk, gesturing towards a cross-temporal synthesis of free improvisation, tape manipulation and field recordings both traditional and experimental at once. Along with their aesthetic sensibilities and sonic innovations, the group’s patchwork recontextualisations are sewn with a sense of labour and class, just as traditional music carries the voices of the oppressed.

At hcmf//, the collective will perform a continuous longform composition arranged for the festival and their residency at Café OTO the following month, entwining pre-existing source material with drones, extended techniques and their own improvisatory practices.

Produced by hcmf// supported by Culture Ireland

Shovel Dance Collective is part of the Sounds Now project co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union

Photo credit: Brad Gilbert