The Best of Bella Hardy - Colston hall presents

A retrospective of the uncompromising journey of celebrated folk singer & songwriter Bella Hardy. So far.

Bella Hardy has sung unaccompanied ballads at a sold-out Royal Albert Hall. She’s taken a band of drums, brass and electronics to the National Concert Hall of Budapest. She’s learnt the songs of Chinese farmers as she helped gather ginger in Yunnan Province. She’s sat on the moors of her beloved Peak District with only her fiddle for company. She’s worked as a ranch hand, looking after horses and fiddle-singing in the diners of Tennessee. With her mesmerising voice and ability to con-jure and twist stories that call straight to the heart, Bella has beguiled audiences from Canada to Ja-pan, from Spanish bars, to Castles, to Concert Halls.

And she shared the whole extraordinary journey with you in her first nine records. In the space of just ten years.

With unflinching courage, Bella has explored and blurred musical boundaries in her search for meaning. From her mastery of tradition music and the stripped back strings and concertina of her debut album ‘Night Visiting’ (2007), to the electric guitar and drums in the self-penned humanist hymns and feminist battle cries of ‘Hey Sammy’ (2017), via the Derbyshire ballads of ‘The Dark Peak & The White’ and ancient Chinese poetry of ‘Eternal Spring’.

Her themes of displacement and home, lost and found love, heartache and joy, are delivered with her unique, disarming honesty, and, of course, the acclaimed crystalline voice that won her BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards Singer of the Year.

Join us for this rare treat, a look back at favourite songs from Bella’s first nine albums, and a glimpse at new material. Bella will be joined by award-winning guitarist Sam Carter, and revered pianist and sometime co-writer Tom Gibbs.