Folk Woodwind Week

Our midweek course for woodwind players interested in the English folk repertoire and style is back for 2027! The course will be led by Sam Partridge and Finn Collinson, who will be joined this year by Jo Freya. As a team, they are three wind players whose expertise covers both a multitude of styles and historical periods.

This will be an opportunity to breathe some life (pun intended) into the English folk dance tunes currently dormant in manuscripts in the library, waiting to be discovered and reinvigorated.

You’ll (hopefully!) leave Halsway with a deeper understanding of, and connection to, folk repertoire as wood-wind players, and with the tools to enjoy this repertoire authentically, as well as having made new friends and been a member of an exciting new wind ensemble!

Who is is for?

This course is suitable for players of all wood-wind instruments, who consider themselves to be working at an intermediate or advanced level.

Diatonic instruments will be welcome, providing you have a range of instruments that enable the playing in keys of up to 4 sharps or flats (e.g. whistle players will need to bring several different instruments along).

You don’t need to be able to read music for this course as the focus will be on learning by ear. However, if this is new to you, the tutors will be sharing tools and techniques to help you approach the skill, and notation can be made available during the course if absolutely required.

You’ll receive a timetable in advance and other material during the course, and you won’t need to prepare anything in advance.

The Team

Jo Freya has been singing and playing traditional folk music since her childhood. As well as being a highly effective workshop leader and teacher in music, dance, voice and composition, she is also a charismatic performer with many high profile folk artists including Blowzabella and Coope, Simpson, Fraser, Freya, Boyes in their work with author Michael Morpurgo. Jo is currently Artistic Director of the National Youth Folk Ensemble.

Finn Collinson is a recorder player, multi-instrumentalist, folk musician and composer based in Suffolk, UK. Finn’s classical training continues to inform his performance and composition within the folk world, where he often uses fragments of historical music and collaborates with a range of different performers from varied backgrounds.

As an educator, Finn works extensively with FolkEast (notably as curator of the festival’s Youth Moot workshop programme). In 2022-23, he was a lead tutor on the East Anglian Traditional Music Trust’s youth showcase project, and he has also undertaken visiting teaching roles with the English Folk Dance & Song Society, Newcastle University and Britten Pears Arts.

A compelling and respectfully innovative musician, Sam Partridge is a multi-instrumentalist, primarily heard performing on the Concert Timber Flute or English Concertina. Specialising in traditional music from across the British Isles, Sam plays in an eclectic variety of ensembles performing at festivals and venues throughout the UK and abroad. An accomplished composer, frequently contributing his efforts to the folk repertoire, he is also a highly skilled and committed educator – most notably, perhaps, as an Artistic Director of the National Youth Folk Ensemble – who has experience teaching on the Folkworks programme at Sage Gateshead and at Folkworks Summer Schools, tutoring at Newcastle University, working as a music teacher in a secondary school, and leading other youth and adult folk music learning projects across the north of England.