West Ealing folk news

Barn dance on Feb 4 2012 was brilliant – snow and all:

BARN DANCE ALERT Barn Dance/Ceilidh in the heart of West Ealing - easy steps, lots of people – come alone, come with family, come with friends. Steps called from the front. Get it right, get it wrong, bring all your left feet. Nibbles included in £8 adult ticket (advance booking) – bring your own beer/wine. Kids of all ages welcome – admission free/donation up to age 16. Local Ealing ‘live’  folk band will be out in full force, wrangled by folk professional Laurel Swift. Sat 4th Feb 2012, 7.30-10.30. St James’s Church (behind Sainsbury’s in W Ealing), St James’s Ave, London W13 9DL. Book in advance Gill Witcomb, 020 8568 4276/gillroy66@tiscali.co.uk.   Adults £8 if booked in advance, £9 on the door, kids (up to age 18) voluntary donation Please forward this to anyone/any organisations you think might be interested.

UPDATE: Sept 2011 Laurel’s Monday workshop class returns Sept 12, 2011, at the Drayton Pub (see left). A selection of West Ealing folk people are playing at the following venues: West Ealing Family Day, St James’s Church, Sat 24 September (pm) Osterley House, 12-4pm, Sun 25 September in the servants’ hall (with optional dancing) West Ealing OPEN Friday lunchtime concert – Oct 7, 2011, 1-2pm. UPDATE: May 2011 Temporary venue change for Laurel’s class on May 16 only: The Drayton is closed for refurb for one week and we’re meeting on Monday May 16th at 113 Uxbridge Rd, W13, corner Culmington Rd, opposite the fire station. Then back to the Drayton Court as normal on Monday nights. UPDATE: May 2011 Laurel’s Monday class restarts May 16. Email Laurel for details (see left). Still no session venue but we’re having house sessions locally so if anyone wants to know more, drop gilladams2011(at)gmail.com an email. As a community band, we played for dancing in Pitshanger in December, played for the opening of Open Ealing in March (113 Uxbridge Rd)  and now play routinely at a psychiatric ward.  The Oddfellas go from strength to strength and run the excellent monthly folk club in West Ealing. Approximately 50 turn up there monthly and it’s a great atmosphere. Folk is right here – in West Ealing. UPDATE November 2010 The Drayton is being renovated so we can’t use their upstairs room at the moment, but do try the first Weds in the month folk club there – it’s full of lovely people doing their thing. And don’t forget Laurel’s term-time workshop for all-comers on Monday evens term-time, same location. Address for folk club and workshops: Drayton Court Hotel, 2 The Avenue, London, W13 8PH – close by West Ealing overground station. UPDATE JUNE 2010 Summer frolics are taking us out of town. Keep watching and we’ll tell you when our next session is. Our sessions are very homely. Just a few people sitting around in a quiet roomy sunny top room of a London pub; we take it in turns (ceilidh style) to tell a story, sing a song, play a tune, try-out a tune!, ask for something (tune or whatever) from someone else. Others join in or not as they choose. It’s not in a public bar. Find us at The Drayton Court Hotel from Sunday, June 21, fortnightly. It’s at the top of the stairs, straight ahead and follow your ears (thanks, Dave). Address is same as for workshop and club: Drayton Court Hotel, 2 The Avenue, London, W13 8PH – close by West Ealing overground station (where trains don’t stop on a Sunday). Plenty of buses, though, from Ealing Broadway station (5 mins). Time: 4-6pm. NEWSFLASH, 07 March, 10: Barn dance was enormously successful in a variety of ways – particularly so, if you count smiling faces on the dance floor and amongst the band. Nearly £1,000 was raised  for Marie Curie Cancer Care nurses. Thanks for all who came and danced their socks off and played their fingers to the bone. Here’s a picture:

 

 

laurel calling for barn dance at st james

NEWSFLASH, 26 January, 10: Some of us are playing for a fund-raising ceilidh (for the Marie Curie Cancer Care nurses) at St James’s Church, West Ealing, (nr Sainsbury’s), W13 9DL, on Sat Feb 27, 2010. All welcome. Laurel is calling and playing – the church is a great big, lovely, barn-like venue, very handy for West Ealing Broadway and the late-night shopping at Sainsbury’s! NEWSFLASH, 12 August, 09: Summer break: no sessions now till Sunday Sept 13, 09, then fortnightly on Sundays as before. 4-6pm at Drayton Court Hotel, 2 The Avenue, London, W13 8PH. NEWSFLASH 17 June, 09: We’re no longer at The Dolphin on Sundays (apparently it’s quite usual for sessions to hop from pub to pub) – but the very good news is that we are at The Drayton Court Hotel from Sunday, June 21, fortnightly. It’s at the top of the stairs, straight ahead and follow your ears (thanks, Dave). Address is same as for workshop and club: Drayton Court Hotel, 2 The Avenue, London, W13 8PH – close by West Ealing overground station (where trains don’t stop on a Sunday). Plenty of buses, though, from Ealing Broadway station (5 mins). Time: 4-6pm. Stay up to date by bookmarking this site or taking the RSS feed from it. About Ealing Sessions This blog is to help promote traditional music sessions in and around Ealing. This is the ‘intro’ page. Click here or on the home tab above and you’ll see some posts. You can make comments on the posts. This is what we mean by a session (by no means definitive): Traditional music session? An opportunity for mainly acoustic instrumentalists to listen and play together in a relaxed setting. People take it in turns to start tunes. No one dominates, although some might gently lead. Types of tune? Mainly instrumental/dance tunes with the occasional song. Mainly traditional tunes from British Isles, but also America and Europe, and newly composed tunes. (‘All music is “folk” – when did you last see a horse play a banjo?’ – unattributed quote). Encouraging new players: everyone is invited, player, singer or listener. If you’re a beginner, listening is a good place to start. We hope to list tunes and maybe even sheet music or ‘abc’ notation, or videos,  if anyone sends us links, so that people get a chance to learn one or two tunes before (or after) they come to a session. Who are ‘we’? Some trad musicians local to Ealing, who (mostly) go to a Monday workshop at the Drayton Court Hotel, 2 The Avenue, W13 8PH led by professional folk musician and dance choreographer Laurel Swift. Some of these Monday workshop musicians have coalesced to become the Oddfellas. The Oddfellas run a Folk Club at the Drayton on the first Wednesday of the month. The author (gillma) has been going to Laurel’s  Monday Workshop for many years.