As part of the Clare Arts Presents (CAPS) Culturlann Sweeney presents Kris Drever live in concert.

Cherished and admired in equal measure by listeners and fellow musicians, award-winning guitarist, singer, songwriter and prolific collaborator Kris Drever has been a leading light on the UK roots scene for well over a decade.

A highly skilled guitarist who adroitly blends traditional folk and flat picking with more contemporary influences – allied to a distinctively relaxed and poised vocal burr, Drever is an astonishingly fine interpreter of other songs, with an increasingly frequent knack for concocting seriously smart lyrical observations and earworm melodies of his own.

Drever has played and recorded with an extensive range of artists including Mark Knopfler, Jack Bruce, Danny Thompson, Eddi Reader, Bela Fleck, Tim O’Brien, Jerry Douglas, Sarah Jarosz, Karine Polwart and Julie Fowlis.

Having grown up in Orkney, after leaving school and moving to Edinburgh he discovered the city’s thriving session scene in the early 2000s. After touring with numerous traditional acts his own profile flourished as part of revered folk experimental trio LAU and following the release of his much-loved debut solo LP Black Water in 2006.

An album in collaboration with Idlewild frontman Roddy Woomble and fiddler John McCusker, Before the Ruin, and a second solo album, Mark the Hard Earth, came soon after along with a steady stream of collaborative releases including last year’s visionary, nature-focused Spell Songs project. LAU have released a succession of acclaimed and adventurous records with esteemed producers including Race the Loser with Tucker Martine (The Decemberists) and Midnight and Closedown with John Parish (PJ Harvey). All of his LAU and solo work has been released on Tom Rose’s Reveal Records label.

The title track to Drever’s self-written third album If Wishes Were Horses, released in 2016, landed him a BBC Radio 2 Folk Award.