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EuroPlus is back! The newly re-opened Slow and Steady Pub (Abingdon Road) --- formerly the White House -- has confirmed that we can meet in the upstairs room starting 4:30 PM for our usual fourth-Sunday slot. I'm hoping for a good turnout. I'll be distributing some new tunes I've learned on Orkney and Shetland, including one lively Faroese one, via the mailing list.
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Welcome to the Oxford EuroPlus afternoon session. We meet the fourth Sunday of every month at the Slow and Steady pub, Abingdon Road. Music from all European traditions, plus Scotland, Orkney and Shetland are welcome. The last three are the "Plus" part. I decided to add in these because first of all Scottish, Orkney and Shetland music has a close affinity with Nordic traditions, and second because there aren't enough sessions in Oxford where such music is regularly played. Note that a lot of Scottish and Shetland tunes appear at the Oxford Slow Session, and indeed the EuroPlus session is a good place for SlowSessionistas to come and play the tunes in a smaller group and somewhat faster. Also, players of Scottish tunes will be interested in Dom's fortnightly Transatlantic Sessions at the Up In Arms, which also blends in bluegrass and old-timey tunes. Check FolkInOxford for times of the Transatlantic Sessions, since they're usually not listed on the Up In Arms event page (and sometimes even pop up some Sunday evenings without appearing on the FolkInOxford calendar either).
What is played depends on who shows up and what mood they are in but you can usually count on Scandi/Nordic, French/Breton, Balfolk (think Naragonia, Andy Cutting's French-inspired stuff, Blowzabella,...) , and a growing number of tunes from Scottish highlands and islands, and points north. As for instruments, you can expect fiddles, nyckelharpa, hurdy-gurdy (i.e. viol-a-roues), accordions, melodeons, concertinas, whistles, flutes, bagpipes (the small continental ones), and sometimes even a harp. But anything acoustic is perfectly welcome. A lot of players just learn the tunes by showing up and learning from each other, but there is a growing tunebook you can get at by following the link on revontuli.uk, for those who prefer the dots.
For questions, more information, or suggestions for additions to the tunebook, contact Ray Pierrehumbert at l