A LIVE-STREAMED concert of songs exploring the world of fairies and ghosts will be the main attraction as a rescheduled St Albans Folk Festival goes mainly online.

The festival will take place from September 25 to 27 after being postponed from June. It will mainly be online and will include a live-streamed concert featuring leading singer Fay Hield,

Hield will be singing songs from her new solo album, Wrackline, which looks at traditional stories involving the ‘otherworld’ of fairies, ghosts and the animal kingdom, working through the imagination to make things real. Her planned launch tour for the album had to be postponed until September 2021, so the St Albans concert will be a rare opportunity to hear it.

Fay’s three previous solo albums, Old Adam, Orfeo and The Looking Glass, were highly acclaimed, as was The Full English, which she brought together some of the top musicians on the scene to perform songs from the English Folk Dance and Song Society’s digital collections which had just been put online. She was also a member of the Witches of Elswick.

Added to her performance activities, Fay teaches and researches folk music as a senior lecturer in ethnomusicology at Sheffield University. She has a passion for making the experience of traditional music widely accessible, which she mainly does through involvement in Soundpost, an organisation advocating educational and entertaining folk music activities.

Support will be by Alison Raymond, winner of last year’s Watford Folk Club song writing competition with her song King of the Meadow. Fay’s set will be live streamed from Sheffield. Tickets for the festival concert, originally due to take place live at the Abbey Theatre can still be booked through its website www.abbeytheatre.org.uk/whats-on/fay-hield.

All My Life’s Buried Here, a new documentary about the composer, folk song collector and morris dancer George Butterworth, can be viewed online any time from 9am on Friday September 25 to midnight on Sunday September 27. There will be an online discussion with the producer, Stewart Morgan Hajdukiewicz at 5pm on Sunday September 27. Tickets are at www.ticketsource.co.uk/stalbansfolkmusic/ and admit to both the film and the discussion. The confirmation email includes an invitation to send questions in advance up to midnight on Saturday September 26.

The day of showcase performances by local singers and musicians, which usually takes place in local pubs will be on YouTube. There will also be a chance to take part in music sessions and singarounds on Zoom. The programme will be available shortly at www.stalbansfolkmusic.org.uk along with links. The events will be free but people can donate at www.gofundme.com/f/st-albans-folk-festival-2020.