BBC Folk Singer of the Year Bella Hardy found her first home in folk music through a childhood love for ballad books. She began performing at festivals from the age of 13. Her debut album Night Visiting established her reputation as a talented songwriter when her first original composition Three Black Feathers earned a BBC Folk Award nomination. Since then, Bella has sung unaccompanied ballads at a sold-out Royal Albert Hall, learnt the songs of Chinese farmers as British Council Musician in Residence in Yunnan Province, and sat on the moors of her beloved Peak District with only her fiddle for company. She spent a year in Tennessee as a ranch hand, looking after horses and fiddle-singing in diners. With her mesmerising voice and ability to conjure stories that call straight to the heart, Bella has beguiled audiences from Canada to Japan, from folk clubs to national concert halls. With unflinching courage, Bella has explored and blurred musical boundaries. From her mastery of traditional music on her debut album Night Visiting (2007), to the self-penned humanist hymns and feminist battle cries of Hey Sammy (2017), via the Derbyshire ballads of The Dark Peak & The White and ancient Chinese poetry of Eternal Spring, an album of songs and poetry recorded in China; her themes of displacement and home, heartache and joy, are delivered with her unique, disarming honesty, and, of course, the acclaimed crystalline voice that won her BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards Singer of the Year.