Growing success for Maria Wallace and True North Music

2019 has been another great year for Huddersfield-based music promoter and booking agent Maria Wallace and her grassroots venture True North Music. Maria has once again reached the finals of the Yorkshire Gig Guide Grassroots Awards (thanks to a public vote) after winning the YGG Outstanding Promoter award in 2017. The 2019 awards event takes place at The Underground in Bradford on Saturday 19th October.

Maria started organising concerts at the beginning of 2015 and has promoted around 45 gigs in Meltham, Marsden, Hepworth, Huddersfield and Sheffield since then, and in 2016 she also started booking nationwide UK tours for some of these artists. True North Music specialises in Americana, bluegrass and folk/roots and has hosted some of the finest American, Canadian and British artists in these genres, including Molly Tuttle, The Slocan Ramblers, Sierra Hull, Ron Block & Tony Furtado, Jaywalkers, The Railsplitters, Front Country and many more. Most of True North Music's concerts at The Carlile Institute have been sold out events, and word has spread about the high quality of these live music nights, which attract a mix of loyal local supporters and roots music fans from further afield.

As an amateur musician and singer herself, Maria has been active on the UK bluegrass and folk scene for many years, building up a network of contacts which has enabled her to bring some of the finest talent to play intimate gigs in Yorkshire. In September 2018, Maria was invited to the USA as a guest of arts organisation South Arts, to participate in their American Sounds programme. The small group of international promoters and festival organisers visited the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA)'s World of Bluegrass conference and festival in North Carolina, to see and hear quintessentially American music. In March 2019, Maria was selected to participate in the IBMA's prestigious Leadership Bluegrass course in Nashville, where she made more valuable contacts in the heartland of bluegrass and country music. In September she was invited to the Music PEI showcase in Prince Edward Island, Canada. These opportunities have all helped True North Music to build positive connections with key people in the bluegrass, folk/roots, country and Americana music communities.

As well as the popular regular concert series in Meltham, Marsden and Sheffield, True North Music is making plans for the first Americana and Bluegrass Day event, which will take place in Marsden on 4th July 2020! You can stay up to date with True North Music at truenorthpromotions.co.uk (you can sign up to their Yorkshire concerts mailing list there) and on social media.

For more information visit http://truenorthpromotions.co.uk/