Festivals and Events

Join us for a Bal, with Topette!!

The evening will kick off with a short performance by students on the Topette!! playing weekend, followed by dancing and merriment for all! Everyone welcome, and bring instruments if you play – there will likely be a session afterwards. The Band Topette!! occupy a unique position in the current folk and traditional music landscape. A collaboration between five highly-regarded individuals from two countries, they’re the kind of perfect idea that, if they didn’t already exist, someone would have to invent. Yet Topette!! are no mere ‘project’ band. They’re a fully-formed and functioning group of the kind that rarely comes around nowadays. Topette!! are a true collective – bonded as much by the joy found in each other’s company as in their shared musical vision. Julien Cartonnet is a powerhouse on both bagpipes and banjo. Fiddler James Delarre’s innate melodic and harmonic sensibilities make him the perfect match for accordion virtuoso Andy Cutting. Tania Buisse’s propulsive bodhrán playing and Barn Stradling’s singularly distinctive bass grooves complete a sound that is irresistible to ears and feet alike.