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We’re excited to welcome Rachel Sermanni to The Strines Nightingale – plus guest Maz O’Connor!Join Rachel Sermanni on an enchanting tour of the outdoors this summer, performing in settings that celebrate the beauty of nature and community. From vibrant festival stages to docklands and piers, woodland tranquility, unique urban gardens, and sustainable Earthship spaces, each stop offers an intimate listening experience in unforgettable surroundings.
NOTE: For most events there will be some wet-weather cover, but we recommend you bring waterproofs/umbrellas if it looks like rain. These are all-weather events and will go ahead unless the forecast is severe.
Rachel Sermanni is a Scottish based singer/songwriter that makes the mundane moments mystical: shock-positive pregnancy tests in train-station toilets, coffee machine breakages, cold river swims, the regret of not saying ‘I love You’, the moon & how it pulls, bare feet on wood floors, the soft glow of a house plant, ‘what even is consciousness?’, strange dreams lingering in quiet mornings…
She brims with dreamy indie-folk pop that speaks of the struggle and desire to Flow, to love, to live, to feel. Sometimes, her songs speak of the rare moments of quiet-still, found in the midst of this struggle & desire.
Rachel’s most recent offering is her fourth studio album: Dreamer Awake. An in depth assortment of playful and candid vignettes, peeping into life: after birth, after separation and in the wake of recognising the internalised conditionings of patriarchy. She seeks to be honest with herself and her environment. She seeks to express from this raw place. She seeks to speak from the descent, the plateaus, the dream-catchings and contemplations of womanhood. There are no conclusions to be drawn. It is a call to arms, of sorts, to wake up and dream the future, to dismiss the external for a minute and tend to the inner landscape of heart and mind. To not be distracted. To focus on the light and the shadow in equal measure.
Since the release of Dreamer Awake, Rachel has become a mother for the second time and continues to explore this experience while offering her songs and also her insights into creativity.
Special guest is Maz O’Connor. Described by The Observer as ‘a highly individual singer-songwriter’, Maz O’Connor is a truly unique artist. Known for her haunting, emotive vocals and her poetic lyricism, her songs are most often short stories inspired by her love of literature, folklore and mythology. She wrote her first song aged four, whilst making a ‘radio show’ with a cassette player, and grew up singing old folk songs in her local Cumbrian venues. She went onto study Literature at Jesus College, Cambridge, where she dove deep into the history of folk song. It was during this time that she started to write her own songs.
Winning a BBC Performing Arts Fund Fellowship in 2014 (once won by Adele) brought Maz to wider attention, and later that year she was nominated for a BBC Folk Award for her first album, ‘This Willowed Light’. Maz has since released three further albums, toured the UK, Europe and Canada, played live sessions on BBC Radio 2 and 3, and appeared at major U.K. festivals, including Glastonbury and WOMAD. She has also written book, music & lyrics for the folk musical ‘The Wife of Michael Cleary’, which won the Stiles + Drewe Prize 2023 and is currently in development with West End producers.
After taking a few years out of recording and performing to have her son and work on her musical, Maz recorded her new album, Love it is a Killing Thing, in April 2025. Recorded live to tape in Spring 2025, this record is a collection of ancient songs about the perils of love, reimagined and in some cases re-composed by Maz. It marks a triumphant return to her folk roots.
This show takes place at the Strines Nightingale – a lovely country pub, formerly called the Sportsman, which re-opened in autumn 2022. Strines is on the Piccadilly-Sheffield train line, and on the 358 bus route from Stockport to Hayfield. This show will run until 10pm at the latest.
Price: £16.50 adv
Info/tickets: https://www.heymanchester.com/rachel-sermanni-3#info
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Event Venue
The Strines Nightingale, 178 Strines Road, Stockport, SK6 7GA, United Kingdom
Tickets
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