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Home > Emily Portman: Women Make Music

Emily Portman: Women Make Music

Solo performer Emily Portman is renowned as a singer, writer and concertina player with an emphasis on folk music and balladry. With a passionate involvement in historical and contemporary female narratives and their various transformations within folk tales, the new work, entitled ‘Hatchling’ will encompass tales of transgressive female characters who overturn established orders and escape their marginal confinement through their wit, trickery and ‘conjuring voices’. The work is due to be performed first at The Sage Gateshead and later at King’s Place, London.

Emily originally hails from Glastonbury, where, raised on a diet of fairytales and deep Somerset folklore she began songwriting at the age of six, starting out with a keyboard, a tape recorder and a thirst for blood-curdling stories. After years immersed in traditional songs, Emily’s return to songwriting has already grabbed attention across the BBC, with a live session for radio 6, high praise on radio 2 and with Radio 3’s ‘Words and Music’ broadcasting live performances of songs from the album at their ‘Free Thinking’ Festival’.

Inspired by folktales and ballads, Emily weaves harmony-rich narratives relaying female experience, accompanied by viola player and singer Lucy Farrell (fresh from touring with The Unthanks) and harpist-singer Rachel Newton of BBC folk Award Nominees The Shee. These visceral visions of a darker Albion conjure landscapes where mythical sirens collide in urban backstreets. Emily’s 2010 debut album ‘The Glamoury’ has been received with overwhelming critical acclaim.

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