Streaming Across The Sea online festival coming up in July

There'll be banjos, fiddles and mandolins galore, lively tunes and songs of heartbreak at the Streaming Across The Sea online festival, which fittingly kicks off on the Fourth of July. Huddersfield-based music promoter True North Music is organising this feast of Americana, bluegrass and roots music, with a top notch line-up of talent from the USA, UK, Canada and New Zealand. The evening concerts will be livestreamed on True North Music’s Facebook page and YouTube channel on Sunday 4th July & Saturday 10th July (split across two weekends to avoid the big matches in the Euros!) and there will also be ticketed Zoom workshops in step dance, banjo and mandolin.

Maria Wallace at True North Music usually books UK tours for American and Canadian bands and has also hosted over 50 gigs in Yorkshire since 2015, winning Yorkshire Gig Guide’s Outstanding Promoter Award in 2017. Her regular concerts at The Carlile Institute in Meltham featuring world class bluegrass and Americana started in 2016 and were a popular fixture until the pandemic stopped play. The upcoming Streaming Across The Sea online festival was originally set to be True North Music's first ever real-life festival, and Maria had managed to secure Arts Council Project Grants funding to help support it. Planned to take place in Marsden in May 2020, of course it had to be cancelled/postponed, and has now been adapted to an online event due to ongoing uncertainty over Covid restrictions.

In the meantime, True North Music adapted to present several online events over the course of the last year, which received warm praise from audiences from around the world. Regular gig-goer Jim from Huddersfield wrote “Roll on the time when live music is back, but for now a HUGE thank you for what you are doing to keep the flame burning!” while Sophie in Holmfirth said “All the workshops were really good, but I particularly loved the dance workshop - a fun thing to try (even if hard to do!).” And all the way from Australia, new fan Barb sent a message to say “Thanks Maria at True North Music and all the musicians. Awesome show, loving it here in Bridgetown, Western Australia!”

Maria said “I'm busy working on all the arrangements for our upcoming Streaming Across The Sea festival in July, including a plan to film and livestream our UK artists from an empty concert room at The Carlile Institute – in a Covid-secure manner, of course. We really hope to have audiences back to gigs there by next year! We hope that lots of local music lovers will support the July online festival, although we’re competing with the charms of summer gardens (and beer gardens!). Remember you can tune in to the music on Facebook or YouTube wherever you are! We’re delighted that Arts Council England allowed us to defer the grant to 2021. This funding enables us to pay the artists a reasonable minimum, but we’ll also be requesting donations to help pay each musician as much as possible. It’s been a really difficult year for independent artists, and they need our ongoing support.

We’ve got some fantastic ticketed workshops too. Sensational Canadian dancer and fiddle player April Verch will lead a class in Ottawa Valley step dancing, brilliant fun for both absolute beginners and experienced dancers. We’ll also have a banjo workshop with award-winning New Zealand banjoist BB Bowness and a mandolin workshop with one of the UK’s top players of the instrument, Mike Giverin. “

More details about Streaming Across The Sea, the performers and workshops can be found at True North Music’s website at:
http://truenorthpromotions.co.uk/streaming-across-the-sea/

The live concerts will be available to view online at: https://www.facebook.com/truenorthmusicuk
https://www.youtube.com/truenorthmusic

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