BELLA Hardy, the BBC Radio 2 Folk Award Winner of the ‘Folk Singer of The Year’ 2014, is set to come to Barnard Castle while launching her new album ‘With The Dawn’.

The album, her seventh, is an account of one year of her life and has been described as a more intimate and reflective album than before.

Her song, Jolly Good Luck To The Girl That Loves A Soldier, was also commissioned by Songs For The Voiceless, a project which gathered the country’s best folk artists to sing some of the lesser known stories of the First World War.

Hardy has collaborated with Martin Simpson, John Smith and others on the hugely acclaimed Elizabethan Sessions, to a joint tour with Edinburgh miserablist Blue Rose Code, and an international songwriter exchange with Canada’s Cara Luft who also guests on this album.

She has also sang solo in a sold-out Albert Hall at the Proms, composed the music for a Radio 4 documentary on the Post Office, written with former Beautiful South founder David Rotheray, formed an all-female fiddle group with folk royalty Eliza Carthy, and won another Radio 2 Folk Award for her original song The Herring Girl.

Her 2013 album battleplan, a collection of re-imagined traditional songs, received the best reviews of her career, with multiple stars showered on it from the broadsheets and folk press alike.

Hardy will perform at The Witham, on May 2, from 8pm.

Tickets are £14 or £12 for concessions.

To book call 01833-631107 or visit www.thewitham.org.uk