Bella Hardy’s soaring and captivating voice inhabits her characters and spins her stories with an equal balance of strength and sensitivity. She presents folk songs in the best tradition, not as antiquated museum pieces, but as relevant and very human artworks.

Winner of the BBC Radio 2 Best Original Song 2012 for The Herring Girl, and nominated for the same award in 2008 for Three Black Feathers, her own songs range in subject matter from fairytales to English working class history, via childhood nostalgia, myth, murder and the human condition, touching on both the fantastical, story telling elements of Kate Bush, and the lovelorn songwriting craft of Carole King.

From Edale in the Peak District, Bella Hardy has released four critically acclaimed solo records, most recently The Dark Peak and The White (Noe, 2012) and Songs Lost & Stolen (Navigator, 2011), toured extensively, and featured across the national media on shows such as Radio 4′s Women’s Hour, Radio 3′s The Verb, and Radio 2′s Terry Wogan Show.