Already sold out folk-jazz trio Quercus make their Irish debut this weekend, with a show at St Stephen’s, the Georgian Pepper Canister church, in Dublin on Saturday. Part of the National Concert Hall-affiliated Tradition Now series, the trio's debut album released by ECM records in April last year was remarkable as not since the 1990s band Lammas had folk and jazz combined so completely, a feat that did not go unrecognised when the trio went on to win the German record critics’ album of the year prize. The 11 songs of the album had taken a glacial seven years to be released after they had been recorded in the bustling setting of Basingstoke, to the south-west of London, rather than on the lonely moor or atmospheric tavern the music might instead suggest. Yet it was clearly worth the wait, and here too for the Dublin audience, to experience Huw Warren’s interplay with the full expressive sound of June Tabor’s voice, that lilt of a folk singer in her prime. And at its most succinct Iain Ballamy’s solo on ‘Near But Far Away’ distilled a life time’s work spent on the interpretation of ballads in their every detail. 

Iain Ballamy, above left, June Tabor, and Huw Warren