Emma Mordue

Category: Kentwell

  • Happy New Year!

    Happy New Year! It is nearly the end of January, and on a rainy rainy day I thought I would get on with some much neglected website admin. Bookings are coming in for the upcoming season, so it is a good time to update some of these pages. Starting with a quick catch up on the blog.

    November saw a return to the Dragon Festival in King’s Lynn with The New Cambridge Waits. We played at various locations around the city. There were lots of activities on offer, such as a dragon trail, and animal encounters, art things, and stalls to look at. We enjoy playing in King’s Lynn a great deal, and are looking forwards to being back there next year for their Hanse Day Festival.

    December brought in another return to Kentwell Hall for their Dickensian Christmas event. Alongside some private Christmas supper functions. Both of these required some Victorian music, and so for the past few months I have been learning to play the melodeon.

    Learning a new instrument is such a delight. You start out in a frustrating way, until gradually it begins to feel familiar and you can relax and play. I managed to gather half an hour worth of tunes, both festive and folky, and made my professional melodeon debut!

    One of the lovely things about playing at Kentwell Hall is that because I’m being a first person character musician, it means that I can be really flexible and relaxed with my playing. This in turn means confidence in a new skill can grow really quickly, as without the pressure of a formal setting it is easier to be bold, and take risks, and see where it takes you.

    Alongside the melodeon, I took my usual requests on the bagpipes. Asking most visitors what their favourite Christmas tune from any period is, and then giving it a good go on the bagpipes. Some tunes are more successful than others! A first this year was a request for The Prodigy, which I think was meant to trip me up, but being a teenager in the 90s, meant I delivered with absolute delight. Breathe by The Prodigy on bagpipes must be a first for anyone surely!

    Emma playing the melodeon dressed in Victorian clothing
    Festive Melodeon

    I have some more melodeon gigs booked already for this year, so I need to increase my non-festive repertoire.

  • The dual faces of October

    The autumn is such a beautiful time of year, the weather turning colder, but the sunlight low and warm imparting its glow onto the damp yellowing leaves.



    It is a very busy time of year for me, as I have two regular events that overlap. The first is Scaresville – The Haunted Village. This is an annual scare attraction set in the grounds of Kentwell Hall, in Suffolk. An hour of interactive scares, taking you into rooms and out into the woods and pushing you to confront all sorts of characters and devices along the way.

    I have the absolute pleasure of being the host at the start of the event, greeting about 1000 victims a night and sending them on to their doom. All with banging tunes, witty banter, and crazy dancing.

    Once half term starts my daytimes are then filled with the sounds of children skipping around the trees, as Kentwell’s family focused Halloweenies event means I spend the days as my dryad self playing music in the magical Hornbeam Circle.

    I do adore this event, the site is beautiful, the children are (almost always) wonderful, we have so many interesting philosophical conversations as well as musical ones.

    Even the smallest of visitors able to play my drum, to which I will often join in on a recorder, sharing a musical conversation that tends to start like two separate people playing and then evolve into listening to each other and really playing together, even the really young ones, which often takes parents by surprise!

    There are new visitors and families that have been many many years in a row, some whose tiny children have played music with me before they had legs long enough to skip around the circle, that now join in the dance. I have spent time with children that seem to never stop talking at all, and some that come in unable to make eye contact, hopefully all leaving with their hearts just a little bit fuller than when they arrived – I know mine always is.

    This then requires a very quick turnaround as daytime green is removed and nighttime blue is reapplied ready for the evening’s shenanigans.

    Both events are filled with a great team of performers both professional and volunteer, and are headed up by a brilliant creative production and build crew.

    My next event at Kentwell Hall will be taking Christmas requests on the bagpipes for their Dickensian Christmas event. Details available on their website.