Heidi Talbot presents Väsen, Floriane Blancke & Inge Thomson at the Queen’s Hall Edinburgh tonight brought some of the diverse talents of contemporary folk music together for a special one-off concert.
The Queen’s Hall is celebrating its 40th anniversary (QH@40) as a music venue this year with a series of special events and, for this one, Heidi Talbot was asked to curate her own programme. With a performance and recording background that has seen her work with many of the established names in (and out of) the folk music genre at an international level, it was always going to be interesting as to who was going to be on-stage for this show, and I think here that Heidi has made a good selection of the obvious and not so obvious performers to be on stage with her for this QH@40 show.
As well as the obvious, and unseen from the public, work involved in curating this show, this was a busy evening for Heidi Talbot working not only as our opening performance artist, but also our compere for the evening. Heidi Talbot is always an interesting singer to listen to for me because it makes no difference whether the song is an old traditional one, one of her own songs (Angels Without Wings) or a contemporary one (If You Stay by Australian singer songwriter Simon Bruce) there is always that feeling of the song and the music having been around for a very long time. That skill of making the new feel old is perhaps one of the most difficult things for any folk singer to achieve. On stage with Heidi for this set was multi-instrumentalist Toby Shaer.
Following on from Heidi Talbot on-stage were the very individual talents of Inge Thomson who grew up on the tiny island of Fair Isle. As an artist, Inge is probably best known for her work with... read the rest of the article here