the watts russell arms
Hopedale,Alstonefield,DE6 2GD
juliette lemoine &
heather cartwright
Thursday 27th April
Juliette Lemoine is exploring and redefining the cello’s role within Scottish traditional music, allowing it to take on a lead melodic role, in the way a fiddle typically would, retaining the same fluidity, bowing style, ornaments and authenticity. Her emotive compositions weave through traditional, classical and jazz genres to create a highly personal new voice, a euphoric celebration of the theme of freedom.
Her playing has taken her across the UK performing at festivals such as Blas Festival, Celtic Connections, HebCelt, Aberdeen Jazz Festival and the BBC Proms and she’ll be joining us after the recent release of her debut album ‘Soaring’.
thomas thinks
Saturday 6th May
Thomas Thinks about everything from social history, mixed roots and social deconstruction, to self-help, meditation and creative processing. How do you find an identity and inner peace,whilst navigating a passage through the labyrinth inside the city walls? A constant tension between euphoric hope and the insistent, dull and sinking energy of dark matter. The muses tease and taunt and the beats and textures pull against each other to form a carefully considered impression of organised chaos. Thoughtful ambient soundscapes with an undercurrent of scratched and sliced hip hop.
stingbeatS
Saturday May 20th
Stringbeats will be performing a selection of Indian classical and folk music. The trio consists of sitar, sarod and tablas. They blew us away with a stunning performance at Lost in the Hills festival in September 2022 and will be back in May with an extended performance.
millicent chapanda
Friday 9th June
Millicent Chapanda is a Zimbabwean Shona cultural artist, traditional mbira player, percussionist, singer, dancer and storyteller. Her music is nourished by Zimbabwean traditional cere-monials where vibrant spiritual and secular music is a key part of bringing people together in devotion, praise, reflection and celebration.
China-born DJ and producer Guohan charters an otherworldly inward journey past ancestral rock carvings and through bustling city streets, telling mythical tales of the sunrise and the sunset along the way. His palette is multi-cultural, drawing on influences from hip-hop and jazz, traditional music and everyday life. The fractured rhythms and harmonies are a reconstruction of memories and missing links, documenting the forgotten moods and colours of contemporary life.
Guohan also plays alongside Pete Beardsworth and Tom Towle in eclectic jazz / hiphop trio Three Body, and is a founding member of Running Circle, Nottingham’s slick artist-led record label, releasing music with love and vision.
Go follow the links and look out for a performance from Three Body for Creative Peaks in the near distant future…
Guohan
Saturday 8th April
Kelly Anna shared a selection of creative pieces, threading together the textured arpeggios of the stars and the subtle movements of the waves. Influenced by the shadows of her own dreams and visions, and shifting between patterns of dissonance, dissociation, peace, suffering, contemplation and release, her compositions are mesmerising, restless and open and vibrate through the limitless beauty of the blackest night.
Kelly’s set included some collaborations with her long lost creative brother, Josh Elliott, who will be performing some of his own intricate and organic compositions.
Influences: Boards of Canada, Elliot Smith, Sun Kil Moon, Nick Cave, Portico Quartet, Caroline Shaw, Andrei Tarkovsky, Mamoru Oshii.
two mirrors
Saturday 11th February
A reflection of the infinite emptiness within: anguished contemporary folk songs echo through the autumn mists and whisper of the tragedy of the shallow seas. Ancient myths and reincarnated sorrows seep through the melodies and irregular phrasing to shape the earthy and introspective sounds of Two Mirrors. Contemporary folk with irregular rhythms and tunings.
Influences: John Francis Flynn, Nick Drake, Joni Mitchell, Nick Cave, Jose Gonzales, Kate Bush, Joshua Burnside