FREE DAYTIME PERFORMANCES 2025

NEWCASTLE PRIMARY SCHOOL opens the Bettws Triangle Festival 2025. Usually performing with the larger Blue Hills Federation Choir, this year they are going solo! Supported by the Shropshire Music Service with both their singing and playing different instruments, the children are looking forward to performing again at St Mary's Church, Bettws. 

New in this form to the Festival.

DUSTBIRDS, a duo playing original folkish tunes. Nick on vocals, guitar, banjo, foot drums, accompanied by Kerry, vocalist and fiddle player. Their songs, whittled to the surrounding rhythm of the Shropshire hills, are playful and plaintive, with themes from TS Elliot’s the Wasteland, psychedelic sea shanties and tales of ghostly happenings in the Stiperstones.

New to the Festival.

SUE HARRIS is one of the country’s foremost Hammered dulcimer players featuring English tradidional music and her own compositions. At the 2015 World Dulcimer Congress in Malvern she conducted an orchestra of dulcimers and cymbaloms, no mean feat! She also writes and arranges music for her community band Bandamania, 3 local community choirs and her rollicking ceilidh band, Polkaworks.      

Delivers brilliant music.   

GERRY KENNEDY: BLOG  JAM: Getting published is a frustrating business: whatever you send can just add to a piled up editor’s desk. Not so the Blog – write about anything you want with fruit gathered from your own garden or the hedgerows. Stir it up, add sweetness or spice, boil, simmer awhile, bottle and spread to your friends. Gerry will lift the lid on a few of his recent confections.

New to the Festival.

MEN FROM OFF are a group of Shropshire men singing together for sheer enjoyment. The group has gradually evolved and now perform 3-and 4-part harmony, down from the original 10! Their repertoire is mainly based on tradidtional and contemporary Shropshire songs but includes others which have a relevance to the ‘Men from Off’. 

Loved by all.

NEWTOWN & DISTRICT MALE VOICE CHOIR: Newtown and District Male Voice Choir come from all walks of life, not only from Newtown, but also the surrounding areas of Mid Wales and Shropshire. The choir regularly performs at a range of events in Newtown and the surrounding area, including concerts, weddings and other community events…
The choir holds its practices every Tuesday evening between 7.30pm and 9.30pm at the ‘Royal Welsh Warehouse’ (Pryce Jones Building), Kerry Road, Newtown, Powys, SY16 1BJ. We are delighted that they will be performing at the Bettws Triangle Festival.

New to the Festival.

MARTIN OYLETT, is a singer-songwriter with an eclectic repertoire that delves into both the British and American tradition. An established performer on the Beds, Bucks and Herts folk circuit, he is now becoming part of The Welsh Marches scene. His self penned songs can sometimes document the quirky side of life, but always entertain, with also a tasteful choice of covers. Martin has a warm, relaxed fingerstyle guitar style, together with shrutie box accompaniment or just purely unaccompanied vocals. He has released four studio albums.

New to the Festival.

JANIE MITCHELL is a singer and songwriter from South Shropshire. Playing guitar and harmonium, she will sing songs based on the medieval Book of Hours, journeying and the UK landscape. She has a true voice which will be fully appreciated in Black Mountain Chapel. 

Making a return appearance to the Festival.

PATRICK GAMBLES & HOLLY: Patrick is an award-winning Moore songwriter. Fine original material with quality vocals, guitar and banjo. Folk roots with a contemporary, country edge. Patrick has recently relocated to South Shropshire after living and performing in Australia for many years. Happily, Patrick’s daughter, Holly, is planning to make a guest appearance on harmony vocals and egg! 

Holly, wiill be new to the Festival.

FLEUR DE LYS: an innovative a capella group made up of Anne Marie Summers, Charlotte Bulley, and Helen Wilding. With a repertoire of medieval music from the 12th to 16th centuries, they play medieval harp, bagpipes, fiddle and hurdy gurdy, and more. Performances are a lively mix of instrumental and acapella, complaining about boorish husbands, longing for lovers, and the joys of wine, dance and song, combined with more reflective works.

Huge hit when here last year.

SHROPSHIRE HARMONY QUIRE: A celebration of the lively and vigorous music of the West Gallery singers and instrumentalists around the time of Jane Austen. These amateur musicians revelled in their music-making but their full-on style and undisciplined behavior led to their expulsion by the church authorities. Shropshire Harmony Quire recreates the unique sound of these village musicians in hymns and anthems that contain folk qualities and surprising echoes of Handel. Director Andy Watts of The Carnival Band harnesses the Quire’s enthusiasm and energy. This is music full of life and joy. 

New to the festival

DAVID REYNOLDS & GEORGE BYATT: Dave (guitar/vocals) and George (vocals) met at a local Folk session when Dave added a guitar part to a song George was singing. They have been performing together ever since. Their repertoire features many styles from good old favourites and ballads to folk and jazz standards. This duo bring something a little different to the festival.

They never fail to deliver.

TOBY HAY: Toby Hay is a guitar player and composer who is fascinated by the connection between landscape and music.  His own music is inspired by the landscapes of the Cambrian Mountains, where he has lived all of his life. These instrumentals are propelled by a restless breeziness that carries them beyond the familiar landscapes of folk….  A shimmering beauty.” — Uncut    "I say it is full of human warmth, but it is also tinged with wildness, and this I think is the beauty of Toby Hay, and of New Music For The 12 String Guitar in particular: he is able to convey multiple different emotions and represent multiple objects or landscapes, often simultaneously, and all with nothing more than a single instrument,  
This is the sign of a master musician at work”  — Folk Radio. “He has already developed a name for creating ethereal sounds that are rooted in a sense of place.  It puts him within the wider explosion within the arts that is informed by a study of the natural world…. It’s dreamy, elusive, and appears to have all the time in the world.” — Songlines 

New to the Festival.

VAL LITTLEHALES is one of Shropshire’s leading storytellers, described as “a fantastic and a true Shropshire wench … so brilliantly entertaining”. Coming from farming stock, born and bred in Shropshire, she has many tales to tell of farming and rural life and brings so much humour and enjoyment to the tales and stories she writes.

New to the Festival.

PATAKAS: “Excepceptionally talented” brothers, Joe and Will Sartin, launched in June their first recording as Patakas, a new duo bursting onto the English folk scene. With Joe’s sublime voice and guitar playing and Will’s dexterous mandolin, the brothers beautifully and skilfully express the music-making and folk tradition that run through the very core of their family. 

New to the Festival