Internationally acclaimed harp and guitar duo Maire N Chathasaigh and Chris Newman will be the main guests at St Albans Folk Festival Concert Support will be provided by Watford Folk Clubs song writing competition winners, The Larks and New Roots 2024 finalist, Sean Spicer. Chris and Maire are each highly regarded in their own right and come from very different backgrounds. Chris plays the steel stringed guitar in a range of musical genres. He has toured and recorded with many luminaries of the folk and jazz worlds, among them Boys of the Lough, Aly Bain, Diz Disley and Stphane Grappelli. His repertoire spans traditional Irish music, hot jazz, bluegrass and baroque, spiced with striking new compositions from his groundbreaking new solo album Breaking Bach. Maire grew up in Bandon, County Cork, in a family steeped in traditional music. In her youth she won many music competitions and went on to perform with her sister Nollaig, a violinist and traditional fiddler and her husband the late Arty McGlynn and sometimes performs with her two sisters as the Casey Sisters. More recently Maire won the prestigious Traditional Musician of the Year award given by Irish language station TG4. The Larks are Liz Miller and Chris Wilbraham, a duo based near Bury St Edmunds. They use guitar and mandolin to complement their voices, as they call on a wide range of influences and experiences to entertain their audiences. Their original songs can be populated by mermaids, nightingales and vampires and have been known to describe a lifeboat disaster or warn of climate change. Thy won the Watford Folk Club Songwriting Competition in 2024. Sean Spicer is a harmonicist, whistler and flautist from Bristol, performing largely in the English and Irish traditions. Sean specifically aims through his performance to explore and propagate the English harmonica tradition, Sean is a National Youth Folk Ensemble alumnus and to date its only harmonicist, and was a Comhaltas All-Britain champion and All-Ireland finalist in the mouth organ and miscellaneous categories, and a National Youth Harmonica champion.