Exeter duo win coveted title at Radio 2 Folk Awards

Phillip Henry and Hannah Martin have proved they are in a league of their own after clinching the coveted Best Duo title at the 15th BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards at the Royal Albert Hall.

One of the most inventive and captivating rising acts on the acoustic roots scene, the Exeter-based pair triumphed over talented fellow nominees  Josienne Clarke & Ben Walker, Ross Ainslie & Jarlath Jenderson and Catrin Finch & Seckjou Keita, receiving their award from another West Country duo that over the last two decades has become one of acoustic music’s most famous pairings – Steve Knightley and Phil Beer of Show of Hands. It was Steve who “discovered” the duo busking on Sidmouth seafront during Sidmouth Folk Week.

The event, hosted by Mark Radcliffe and Julie Fowlis and including live performances from Suzanne Vega, Bellowhead, The Full English, Peggy Seeger and Lifetime Achievement winners Martin Carthy and Clannad was broadcast live on Radio 2 and video highlights will be available from today.The whole show will be repeated on a loop on Red Button at various times next week. 

Announcing the win Steve Knightley said: “This duo have brought something quite original to the genre with their haunting mixture of English, Irish, Indian and Celtic textures. It’s taken them from busking on Sidmouth seafront to playing with us here at the Royal Albert Hall in two short years.” Listen to the Best Duo announcement at 6 mins 36 here. 

In turn Phillip Henry thanked Show of Hands for their “great support, advice and friendship” whilst Hannah thanked all the gig-goers and “all the folk clubs and festivals that have supported us over the years, creating such an amazing live music scene in this country – that’s why we ‘re here.”

Phillip and Hannah unveiled their evocative second studio album in September to marked acclaim from all quarters - the moving and mystical Mynd (Old English for memory and remembrance) - an exquisite 12-track album infused with Phil’s trademark instrumental virtuosity, Hannah’s clear vocals and the pair’s highly original thought-provoking songs often trawled from some of the less obvious moments in history.

The duo are also nominated for both Best Album and Best Original Song (Silbury Hill) in the 2014 Spiral Awards, run by popular music website Spiral Earth.

Widely regarded as one of the best slide guitarists in the UK, Lancashire-born multi instrumentalist Phillip Henry has been described as “one of the most extraordinary musicians around” with his music recently featuring on BBC2’s awesome adventure Operation Grand Canyon. Henry, who studied in Calcutta with India’s premier slide guitarist Debashish Bhattacharya, is also a virtuoso on the harmonica and brilliant on beatbox harmonica whilst Brixham-born singer-songwriter Hannah, is a skilled fiddler, viola and banjo player with a real lightness of touch, a distinctive voice and a gift for tapping traditional music veins to create contemporary songs.

Mynd inhabits an English landscape of Neolithic barrows and haunted East Anglian fens, while other narrative songs transport you to the heat of Syria, Egypt and the American south and across to the Swedish chill and Arctic ice.

Sometimes mournful, often haunting and always compelling each Henry and Martin song is a fresh journey of discovery – twisting, curling melodies and eclectic rhythms wrapping themselves around perceptive lyrics. Produced by Mark Tucker, Mynd draws inspiration from unexpected places - championing remarkable women in several tracks - c18th German astronomer William Herschel’s sister Caroline, (the sublime Song for Caroline Herschel) ; Anna Charlier, the fiancée of  lost Arctic explorer Nils Strindberg who, though buried in Torquay, wanted her heart to be placed in a box in his Stockholm grave (Silver Box) , esteemed Victorian gardener Ellen Willmott whose lasting legacy grew from seeds surreptitiously sprinkled in other people’s gardens (Miss Willmott’s Ghost) and the courageous Sunday Times journalist Marie Colvin killed in Syria’s Siege of Homs in 2012 whose story is movingly recounted in the haunting Hannah Martin-penned song Last Broadcast, with lyrics drawn from the correspondent’s final article.

Winners of Best Folk Act in the 2012 South West Music Awards and Best Duo in the 2013 Spiral Awards, this class act has already played the Royal Albert Hall when they supported Show of Hands there in 2012 while last summer they played Glastonbury, Cambridge and Broadstairs festivals. They have the knack of transporting listeners into a reverie with their almost tactile music, all delivered with a gossamer light touch, none more so than the languid Thirty Miles with Phil on vocal, inspired by Toni Morrison’s book Beloved; Phil’s drifting dobro interlude Elegy, first played at the Albert Hall and the album closer - a beautifully understated take on James Taylor’s Close Your Eyes.

Henry and Martin have recently returned from a tour of Germany and the Netherlands and now embark on a busy year of UK gigs and festivals, starting with a sold-out gig at Milverton in Somerset.

Phil and Hannah perform The Boy Who Wouldn’t Hoe Corn in the video below. The duo’s song Silbury Hill features on a double CD of music by nominated artists at the Folk Awards, distributed by Proper Music.