Welsh band opens folk-concert season

The 45th season of the Woods Hole Folk Music Society's concert series will open tonight with a 7:30 performance by Welsh quintet Calan at Woods Hole Community Hall, 68 Water St.

Calan’s members are five young professionals who play traditional Welsh music in a lively contemporary style, aiming to breathe new life into old traditions – including reels, jigs and hornpipes as well as haunting ballads and Welsh step-dancing.

The band features Angharad Sian Jenkins on fiddle; vocalist and step-dancer Bethan Rhiannon on accordion and piano; Sam Humphreys on guitar; Alice French on harp; and Patrick Rimes on fiddle, whistle and pibgorn (a traditional Welsh reed instrument made from a wooden pipe and the horns of a bull). The group started in 2005 when some members, who had met during a Welsh-Swedish folk music exchange program, started playing in the streets of Cardiff to raise money for their university fees and quickly became a local sensation.

Calan’s first performance was at a local folk festival in 2008; since then, they have played at major festivals throughout Wales, England and Scotland; at London’s famed Royal Albert Hall alongside Sting and Welsh bass-baritone Bryn Terfel in 2015; and in concert tours of Italy, Austria and Belgium, Canada and the United States. The band has recorded five albums.

Upcoming shows in the Woods Hole season: Oct. 23, Sarah McQuaid; Nov. 6, Gordon Bok; Nov. 20, Cassie & Maggie MacDonald; Jan. 15, April Verch Band; Jan. 29, Bill Staines; and March 12, Molskey’s Mountain Drifters.