Nancy Kerr

Nancy Kerr
Kerr on stage at the 2010 Shrewsbury Folk Festival
Background information
Born	Plaistow, London 1975
Genres	English folk music
Occupation(s)	Singer-songwriter Multi-instrumentalist
Instruments	Vocals, fiddle, viola, cello, guitar, harmonium, autoharp
Years active	1990s–present
Labels	Little Dish Records
Associated acts	Eliza Carthy Sandra Kerr Epona Nancy Kerr and James Fagan Kerr Fagan Harbron Tim Van Eyken Simpson Cutting Kerr
Website	nancykerr.co.uk

Nancy Kerr (born 1975) is an English folk musician and songwriter, specialising in the fiddle and singing. Born in London, she now lives in Sheffield. She is the daughter of London-born singer-songwriter Sandra Kerr and Northumbrian piper Ron Elliott. She was the 2015 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards "Folk Singer of the Year".

Kerr came to prominence in the early 1990s via a musical partnership with fellow fiddle player Eliza Carthy. The duo produced two albums – Eliza Carthy & Nancy Kerr (1993) and Shape of Scrape (1995) – before ceasing to work together. A retrospective collection of their work (plus three previously unreleased tracks) – On Reflection – was released in 2002.

Kerr and her mother released an album together – Neat and Complete – in 1996.

Since 1995 Kerr has mostly worked in a duo with Australian bouzouki player and singer James Fagan, whom she married in 2007. The duo won the Horizon Award at the inaugural BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards in 2000, and Best Duo at the same awards in both 2003 and 2011 Between 1997 and 2008 they released six albums on the Fellside label – "Starry Gazy Pie" (1997), "Scalene" (with Sandra Kerr) (1998), "Steely Water" (1999), "Between The Dark and Light" (2002), "Strands of Gold" (2006) and "Station House" (with Robert Harbron) (2008). 2010 saw the production their first completely original collection of songs – "Twice Reflected Sun", released 9 August 2010 on Navigator Records (NAV0041). First track of the album, Queen of Waters, was nominated for the Best Original Song category at the BBC Folk Awards in 2011.

In 2008 the duo joined forces with concertina player Robert Harbron to form the trio Kerr Fagan Harbron, recording and touring the album Station House (Fellside CD 211).

Kerr has also worked with folk/pop group Epona, Australian folk family band The Fagans and the Tim van Eyken band, amongst others.

In 2010 she joined James Fagan, Richard Arrowsmith and Jess Arrowsmith to form "Melrose Quartet" in her new home city of Sheffield. They released a live EP in 2011 called "Live at Cheltenham" and a studio album "Fifty Verses" in 2013.