Join Cara Dillon for a magical and magical night of Christmas songs here in Milton Keynes.
Having recorded her highly anticipated Christmas album "Upon A Winter's Night" Cara and her band will be performing classic Carols, Celtic Hymns and other Christmas songs to celebrate and share in the Christmas Spirit.
A tradition in the making, happening on Friday (December 1).
If you don’t know the voice of Cara Dillon, you’re in for a treat. If you are already amongst her legions of admirers around the world, you know you have something special in store.
The extraordinary Irish singer makes music that transcends genres and crosses barriers. She has won every folk award going, but confesses to being no purist, making music that reaches beyond the constraints and limitations of tradition.
“To me, you can go anywhere with every song. The melody and message is at the forefront of everything I do. I don’t really care where the song came from, how old it is, and who did it first. It’s whether it strikes a note in my heart, does it haunt me, do I need to sing it?” Raised in the small village of Dungiven, Northern Ireland, Cara has been singing all her life.
“I do believe I am part of a continuing story, a story that’s still unfolding, that reaches back through songs I’ve grown up with, and uncles that emigrated to America, and stuff that happened in my own family, and reaches forward to stuff that’s still happening now.”
At the end of the 1990s, Cara and Sam left folk supergroup Equation to record her 2001 debut, Cara Dillon.
It went on to be the break out folk success of the year. In 2007, after two more outstanding albums, they left Rough Trade to form their own Charcoal Records.
The resulting 2009 album, Hill of Thieves, proved her most successful yet, top ten in the UK indie charts and number one on iTunes Folk and Amazon World & Folk charts. “It seems that if we please ourselves, we please other people too,” says Sam.
When she sings, Cara’s voice embraces the divine. In person, she can be blunt and ebullient, with a vigorous and enchanting character.
“I am so precious and passionate about our albums, but I am so happy aside from that to dabble and be open and try other things. If you’re just a closed book, you don’t really learn.”
“Music is for everyone,” says Sam, summing up the couples attitude to the synthesis of styles and influences that make up their distinctive sound. “It’s a common language. I’ve got no time for the folk police. As artists, of course we have an appreciation of the depths of music and how highbrow it can get. We are not shallow. We put every piece of blood sweat and tears into the music we make, that’s what matters to us.”
“Some folk musicians want to know every detail about a song, and I really empathise with that,” adds Cara. “But it’s not what’s important to me. I just identify with a song, I’m looking for something that touches me deeply, and I feel like I’m the vessel for letting it live on.”
To book tickets click here
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