Jackie Oates

Award-winning English singer and fiddle player Jacke Oates combines the breadth of traditional British folk music with an ear cocked toward the mainstream. Her work with Rachel Unthank and the Winterset in 2005 led to a successful solo career that has yielded acclaimed efforts like Saturnine (2011), The Spyglass & The Herringbone (2015), and Gracious Wings (2022). Earthcycle, a trad-folk-inflected reworking of Vivaldi's Four Seasons with Orchestra of the Swan, appeared in 2024. In addition to her solo work, Oates has performed as part of the folk trio Wistman's Wood and sung with Morris Offspring, The Imagined Village, and John Spiers of Bellowhead. Born in Congleton in Cheshire and raised in Staffordshire, Oates spent her formative years attending folk festivals and participating in barroom singalongs with her music-loving family -- her father was a Morris dancer, and her older brother Douglas, who goes by the moniker Jim Moray, is a trailblazing folk singer, multi-instrumentalist, and record producer. Upon receiving a degree in English at Exeter University in Devon, where she developed a love for traditional balladry, Oates began collecting songs from the area. In 2004, she joined Rachel Unthank and the Winterset on viola and appeared on the band's debut album, Cruel Sister, the following year. Having gained confidence from performing with the group, who would later morph into one of the premier English folk acts of the early 21st century, the Unthanks, Oates elected to blaze her own path, releasing her eponymous debut album in 2006. The Violet Hour appeared two years later and, like its predecessor, saw Oates filtering a set of regional folk material through a modern lens. In 2010, she teamed up with prolific Scottish indie folk artist Alasdair Roberts (Appendix Out) on Hyperboreans, and in 2011, she released the lauded Saturnine, which added a handful of heartfelt originals to her arsenal. She joined the folk fusion collective the Imagined Village for their 2012 LP Bending the Dark and explored the history of cradle songs on her 2013 solo outing, Lullabies. The far less sleepy Spyglass & the Herringbone appeared two years later, delivering an eclectic and upbeat set of primarily traditional songs. Oates looked inward on 2018's deeply personal The Joy of Living, inspired by the birth of her daughter and the death of her father. Needle Pin, Needle Pin, a collaboration with Bellowhead's John Spiers, appeared in 2020, with Oates' eighth solo effort, Gracious Wings, arriving in 2022. The album was informed by her fieldwork at an Oxford hospice while studying for her master's degree in music psychotherapy. Two years later, she teamed up with Baroque/jazz musician and composer David Gordon on Orchestra of the Swan's Earthcycle, an environmentally themed film and music project celebrating the 300th anniversary of Vivaldi's Four Seasons. ~ James Christopher Monger, Rovi