Gig: Jon Bennett & Jacqui Johnson - Moonrakers

Members of Moonrakers bring you an evening of music as part of their teaching residency at Halsway Manor.

Jon Bennett has performed at festivals, arts centres and clubs in Lincolnshire, Shropshire, Oxfordshire and the North East since the 1980s. He has published children's songs commissioned by the National Cooperative Movement and the BBC and, with arrangements by Jacqui, has two books of original and traditional tunes published by Mel Bay. He's a previous winner BBC-radio/Folkwrite Magazine songwriting competition and a finalist of the International Songsearch competition. Jon's music has featured on the BBC's award-winning Global Echoes programme and on Radio 4.

Every year, with Jacqui, he manages and teaches Folk Orchestra, Songwriting and Ukulele courses at the National Centre for the Folk Arts (Halsway Manor) and Benslow Music, and has also run courses at festivals such as Common Ground (Scotland), Broadstairs Folk Week, BunkFest and the Ukulele Festival of Great Britain. He has written more than 80 reviews for Shire Folk magazine and is a staff/contributing writer for RnR Magazine. He founded Moonrakers in 1998.

​Jacqui Johnson graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne, Australia. She subsequently became a full time member of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, and later played with the Australian Opera and Ballet companies. She broadcasted and recorded recitals for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, gave many solo and chamber recitals throughout Australia, and toured China and Hong Kong. On moving to Oxford, Jacqui became a freelance musician, combining teaching, chamber music and solo performances with orchestras such as Milton Keynes Sinfonia, Oxford Symphony Orchestra, John Radcliffe Orchestra and Didcot Concert Orchestra. She plays an 18th century Italian baroque cello as well as a modern cello. She joined Moonrakers in late 2018 and from 2019 joined Jon as a tutor at the Folk Orchestra events.