Duncan Seaman

It’s a blowy day down in Devon as Seth Lakeman speaks to The Yorkshire Post but the folk singer, fiddle player and guitarist is in good spirits. “It’s all under control,” he says with a gentle laugh. Now aged 49, Lakeman is a long-established figure in the British folk scene but this month he will be turning back the clock to his younger years to commemorate the 20th anniversary of his third album, Freedom Fields.

Leba Hibbert has an infectious giggle as she sits talking to The Yorkshire Post via video from her home in Jamaica. We’re here to talk about her forthcoming UK tour fronting her late father’s band, Toots and the Maytals and she says is proud to continue his legacy.

Classical music’s great outsider delivers a performance to remember.

Rapper and spoken word artist Lence is excited to be bringing back his popular showcase for jazz, hip-hop and poetry – this time as part of Leeds Jazz Festival. Called Blur The Lines, it has staged various venues in Leeds, but this year moves to City Varieties.

Formed in 2022, at the end of the Covid lockdowns, The Endless Hum are a collective of promoters who all gained experience from the do-it-yourself music scene in Leeds before gradually putting down roots in the Shipley and Saltaire area.

Much water has flowed under the bridge since David Balfe and David Hughes last worked together in 1978, in the Wirral synth-pop band Dalek I Love You. But now the pair have reunited in the new musical collaboration Late Transmissions.

As befits a musician who has often carried a slightly professorial air, Thomas Dolby these days devotes much of his time to lecturing at one of America’s most prestigious academic institutions, the Peabody Conservatory at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

In Belfast on the latest leg of a 34-date tour of the UK and Europe, Kiefer Sutherland sounds like a man who is enjoying the life of a travelling musician. “We’re having a lot of fun and I hope everybody else is too,” says the British-Candian actor turned singer, songwriter and band leader.

Grassroots venues have been a rite of passage for many a future chart star – and British soul singer Omar has such fond memories of them that this month he is returning to small, independently-run clubs for a national tour in association with the Music Venue Trust.

Poet Laureate Simon Armitage, comedians Frank Skinner and Jim Moir and numerous former band members will be taking part in a weekend festival commemorating the legacy of one of Manchester’s most influential bands, The Fall.