This year’s St Albans Folk Festival will take place later this month, after being postponed from June.

Running from Friday, September 25 to Sunday, September 27, the 2020 festival will mainly be online.

It will include a live-streamed concert featuring leading singer Fay Hield, a new and well-reviewed documentary film ‘All My Life’s Buried Here’ about the composer, folk song collector and Morris dancer, George Butterworth, and many free performances by performers from the local area.

Fay Hield will be singing songs from her new solo album, Wrackline, which looks at traditional stories involving the ‘otherworld’ of fairies, ghosts and the animal kingdom.

Her planned launch tour for the album has been postponed until September 2021, so the St Albans concert on September 27 will be a rare opportunity to hear it now.

Fay’s three previous solo albums, Old Adam, Orfeo and Looking Glass, were highly acclaimed, as was The Full English, in which she brought together some of the top musicians on the scene to perform songs from the English Folk Dance and Song Society’s digital collections which had just been put online.

She was also a member of folk quartet The Witches of Elswick.

Added to her distinguished performance activities, Fay teaches and researches folk music as a senior lecturer in Ethnomusicology at Sheffield University.

She has a passion for making the experience of traditional music widely accessible, which she mainly does through involvement in Soundpost, an organisation advocating educational and entertaining folk music activities.

Support will come from Alison Raymond, winner of last year’s Watford Folk Club song writing competition with her song, ‘King of the Meadow’.

Fay’s set will be streamed live from Sheffield.

Tickets for the festival concert, originally due to take place live at the Abbey Theatre in St Albans, can still be booked through its website https://www.abbeytheatre.org.uk/whats-on/fay-hield/

Documentary ‘All My Life’s Buried Here’ can be viewed online any time from 9am on Friday, September 25 to midnight on Sunday, September 27.

There will be an online discussion with the producer, Stewart Morgan Hajdukiewicz, at 5pm on Sunday, September 27.

Tickets are at www.ticketsource.co.uk/stalbansfolkmusic/ and admit to both the film and the discussion.

The confirmation email includes an invitation to send questions in advance up to midnight on Saturday, September 26.

The festival’s annual day of music, with showcase performances by local singers and musicians, which usually takes place in local pubs, will be on YouTube this year.

There will also be a chance to take part in music sessions and singarounds on Zoom.

The full programme will be available shortly at www.stalbansfolkmusic.org.uk along with links to the music.

The events will be free but there will be invitations to donate via GoFundMe.

The link is www.gofundme.com/f/st-albans-folk-festival-2020