Eliza Carthy
(MBE) is undoubtedly one of the most impressive and engaging performers of her generation. Twice nominated for the Mercury Prize and winner of innumerable other accolades over a 25-year career, Eliza has performed and recorded with a diverse array of artists including Paul Weller, Rufus and Martha Wainwright, Nick Cave, Patrick Wolf and Bob Neuwirth. More than most, Eliza Carthy has revitalised folk music and captured the most hardened of dissenters with intelligent, charismatic and boundary-crossing performance.

Eliza grew up immersed in the world of traditional music. She still divides her time between touring and recording with her legendary parents, Martin Carthy and Norma Waterson as well as engaging in numerous pioneering solo and band projects, including work recently with Kate Tempest (BBC Radio 6 festival 2014) and In what has become something of a parallel career, Eliza has co-presented the BBC Radio 3 World Music Awards, been a regular guest-presenter on the BBC Radio 2 Mark Radcliffe Show and has made many appearances on BBC TVs ‘Later with Jools’. In her own right, Eliza has been the subject of an hour-long ITV documentary (‘Heaven & Earth’) and ‘My Music’ on Channel 5. Comedian and writer Stewart Lee described Eliza as “Not the Messiah, but a very naughty girl”.

She has recently branched out also into theatre composing for acclaimed British director Barrie Rutter OBE at Shakespeare’s Globe and Hull Truck Theatre, and in film work both on-set and off for producer/composer Kate St John and her husband Neill Maccoll (Far From the Madding Crowd, Tulip Fever).