Whet your musical whistle at this Friday night concert of country, folk, celtic and blues!
Sure to uplift, this one-off collective of women musicians celebrate the strength of the female spirit in song. Featuring celebrated Kiwi/UK singer-songwriter Rachel Dawick, blues diva Ma Bell (Izzy Miller Bell), one of the countrys leading female finger-picking guitarists Susan Grant, and Laura Tomlin and Argene Montgomery-Honger from Emeralds & Greenstone.
RACHEL DAWICK In an epic journey, celebrated Kiwi singer-songwriter Rachel Dawick has just spent two months in a van and one month cycling two cycling the length and breadth of Aotearoa, collecting stories from the fabric of NZs past womens and performing solo wherever she went to raise funds for the Christchurch Womens Refuge and capture an incredible archive of storytelling. www.racheldawick.com
MA BELL (IZZY MILLER BELL) Blues diva Ma Bell hails from Scotland, having played many a music festival from Europe to Australia on her journey to Redcliffs, Christchurch. Singer-songwriter, storyteller, and eloquent interpreter of song, Ma Bell is known for her collaborations with fingerstyle guitarists, locally most notably Jon Hooker and Susan L. Grant. Her band, Ma Bell and The Blue Tones, recently played in the RWC Fanzone and will be again appearing in the 2012 Garden City SummerTimes Lazy Sunday series. Of her album of original composition, Blues Angel, Paul Gambocini (BBC) said he was ouched by the sincerity of Blues Angel and heartened to know that there are stil musicians around who aren willing to compromise their integrity for commercial success. www.myspace.com/millerbellmusic
SUSAN GRANT One of NZs leading women fingerstyle guitarists, Susan is a guitarist with a love of all strings acoustic. She was recently a finalist in the New Zealand Golden Guitar Awards in the Instrumental section, and plays with a wide variety of musicians in and around Christchurch. She performs regularly with Lynette Diaz, as part of the Manuka Hunnies. www.reverbnation.com/manukahunnies
LYNETTE DIAZ Lynette Diaz is an American-born, New Zealand-based singer-songwriter with a voice and style that evokes flashes of female folk singers of the 60’s, while writing contemporary themes of universal love and dignity. Lynette sings with a fiery voice that she attributes to her Mexican-American roots. www.facebook.com/lynettediazmusicofficial
ARGENE MONTGOMERY-HONGER A champion Irish dancer, Argene draws on this background in her personal percussion style on the bodhran (Irish drum). She is percussionist and Irish whistle player with Emeralds & Greenstone, finding time earlier this year to teach and undertake an earthquake fundraising expedition to Mt Kilimanjaro.
LAURA TOMLIN Founding member of Maori-Celtic folk fusion Emeralds & Greenstone, Laura is a singer-songwriter with a repertoire crossing celtic, folk, blues and jazz. She plays keyboard, Irish flute and percussion. www.facebook.com/emeraldsandgreenstone www.myspace.com/emeraldsandgreenstone
