March 2025

Members of Moonrakers bring their exciting and dynamic music to Halsway Manor.

Two members of Moonrakers – Jon Bennett (guitar, bouzouki, low whistles, ukelele and vocals) and Jacqui Johnson (cello, accordion) – will be joined by Andy May (Northumbrian small pipes) for an informal concert of tunes, songs, and anecdotes. Moonrakers is an Oxford-based group of four musicians who pride themselves in having brought traditional and contemporary folk music to new audiences in village halls, churches, arts centres and festivals across the UK. The fact that the band “just OOZES quality” (Living Tradition) is down to the careful arrangements and selection of tunes and songs, presenting “exquisite music” (BBC). The material is a combination of traditional Irish, Scottish, Welsh and English music and their own contemporary songs and tunes, still very much ‘in the idiom’.