Ninebarrow (Jon Whitley and Jay La Bouchardiere) are a multi-award-winning folk duo, who are impressing audiences across the country with their innovative and captivating take on the folk tradition. Described by Mark Radcliffe as sounding ‘like two halves of one voice’ and by Mercury Music Prize nominee Kate Rusby as ‘absolutely amazing’, Jon and Jay combine breath taking vocal harmonies and melodies, delivering original songs that are inspired and rooted in the landscape and history of the British Isles. As well as crafting unique and engaging original material, Ninebarrow also take a wide-range of traditional folk songs and rework them in their own, distinctive way.
Jon and Jay relinquished their respective full-time jobs as a teacher and GP back in 2016and took a leap of faith into the music business–a gamble that almost immediately paid off. In 2017, they were nominated for a BBC Radio 2 Folk Award: one of the highest accolades in the world of folk music and clear recognition for their outstanding harmonies, high production values, poetic lyricism and magical instrumentation.
Named after Nine Barrow Down in Dorset’s Purbeck hills, over the course of 12 years and 6 studio albums, the duo have earned themselves a quality reputation for their engaging and empathetic song writing, their imaginative reworkings of traditional songs, their deft musicianship and, most of all, their exquisite vocal harmonies.
In their latest studio album, those harmonies have been fused with more than 40 other voices from Hampshire’s Hart Voices (based in Fleet) and Surrey’s Chantry Singers (from Guildford) to create ‘The Hour of the Blackbird’, which sees 13 of Ninebarrow’s finest back catalogue songs renewed and enhanced by the soaring vocals of sopranos, altos, tenors and basses under the energetic musical directorship of Roy Rashbrook, himself a member of the choir of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Two years on from their highly praised album ‘The Colour of Night’ (‘one of the most beautiful folk albums you will hear-outstanding’-Daily Express) ’The Hour of the Blackbird’ was released to widespread critical acclaim receiving a raft of 4 and 5 star reviews in the folk and mainstream media and undoubtedly contributed to the duo being crowned ‘Best Band’ in FATEA Magazine’s 2025 Awards.
‘The Hour of the Blackbird’ takes Ninebarrow’s strong original material and weaves it into a spectacular, theatrical soundscape. It is yet another new tangent for the act whose combined love of music and walking has led to them hosting popular musical walking holidays and publishing three books of Dorset walks. Add to that their regular tours, livestreamed broadcasts and the creation of the 1000-tree Ninebarrow woodland in Dorset (as seen on BBC TV’s Countryfile) and you have some idea of the drive of this duo.
Engaging, charismatic and humorous- Ninebarrow are winning new fans wherever they go. See them live, and you’ll quickly understand why.
