Ely Folk Festival is on course to sell out for the first time in its 23-year history. Weekend tickets and Saturday tickets are already sold out, but some Friday and Sunday tickets are still available.

The Festival takes place 11-13 July at Ely Outdoor Centre, to the north of the city. Participating artists this year include Show of Hands, Martin Simpson, Zambula, Spiers and Boden, Saor Patrol, Last Nights Fun, Boo Hewerdine, Kerfuffle, Idiot and Friend, Mawkin:Causley, ColvinQuarmby, Gareth Pearson, Wide Glide Band, Al Lindsay, Ligtning Jack, Claude Bourbon, Jade, Bof! and Shambolica.

If you can't get to the Festival itself, you can still watch the procession in Ely city centre from 11am on Saturday, featuring a colourful array of Morris sides, headed by Saor Patrol with drums and pipes.

Moving Tone reviewer Rychard Carrington had this to say about last year's festival.

"Ely Folk Festival is a fairly delightful haven-cum-celebration, in which all the best values of folk music culture are manifest. The weekend event is testimony to the perpetuating virtues of the folk revival, true to its values and its spirit (if not to some of the more rigid early orthodoxies). It is well organised by a very dedicated team, and, happily, the fruits of their labours are well worth the considerable effort. The festival is, above all, a friendly and a happy one. The many regular attenders evidently hold the event in considerable affection, and rightly so.

It's one of those festivals where the person in front of you in the queue for the toilet turns out to be the star on the stage an hour later. An hour later still you peer through a rail of tie-dye garments in the boutique stall and there they are again, to all the world just a regular festival-goer. There are several official ‘Meet the Musician' sessions in the smallest marquee throughout the weekend, but actually it's generally quite easy to bump into them and get chatting anyway. It's definitely not a place where anyone feels inclined to be standoffish. In fact, the festival holds little appeal to the unpleasant: more or less everyone in attendance is thoroughly nice.

Furthermore, Ely provided fresh proof that the level of music al talent in folk is a excitingly high as ever ..."

Moving tone will also be reviewing this year's Ely Folk festival.

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