Kings Place welcomes rising stars Owen Spafford and Louis Campbell to its Future Folk series. A contemporary folk duo who effortlessly combine traditional and experimental sound worlds to create powerful, intricate and intimate music.

Owen Spafford and Louis Campbell met as teenagers, as part of the first cohort of the National Youth Folk Ensemble. They have been nominated for the BBC Young Folk Award and received play on BBC Radio 2,3 and RTE1. A shared musical ‘true north’ and lasting friendship enable the duo to make two instruments seemingly sound as one.

Their critically acclaimed debut album, You, Golden, released Nov 2022, was self-produced and recorded live in just two and a half days with engineer Joe Garcia (Idles, Blowzabella), featuring a mixture of traditional and self-penned material.

The duo allows Owen and Louis to distill their love of traditional and experimental music into powerful, intricate and intimate music. You, Golden manages to orbit many different sound-worlds while staying within acoustic English folk music; seamlessly blending traditional tunes with their own material.

Improvisation, humour and musicality make each live performance unique.

This event will last approximately 2 hours and 20 minutes, including an interval.

19:30 Doors
20:00 – 21:10 Performance
21:10 – 21:30 Interval
21:30 – 22:20 Jam session

The artists invite you join them for a jam session after their performance! You’re welcome to join in and bring along any instrument of your choice, no matter your ability.

At the end of the concert and after the interval, those audience members who have brought instruments will be invited to join the performers in Hall Two for an informal session. A space for folk songs, tunes and stories to be shared freely in an inclusive, cross-generational setting where communities can remember, learn and be renewed.

Reviews

‘Rising stars of the folk scene’- Katie Derham, BBC Radio 3

‘Beautiful, swirling, modern English folk music’ – Mark Radcliffe, BBC Radio 2

‘Brave, brilliant, deeply musical and creative. Listen to this….’- Martin Simpson

Future Folk is a new programme strand at Kings Place designed to showcase emerging artists creating and reshaping music inspired by folk traditions in new, progressive ways for contemporary audiences. It will initially feature five monthly shows running through the winter of 2023/24, putting these talented musicians centre stage in a time when breakthrough acts can easily become lost in the current economic realities of folk music programming.