JACKIE Oates’s decision to leave the folk group Rachel Unthank and The Winterset in 2007 to pursue a solo career looked like a brave decision at the time – but has proved to be inspired.

Jackie was soon nominated as best newcomer in the prestigious BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards and she’ll be playing at Ludlow Assembly Rooms on Saturday, October 1.

A swathe of glowing national reviews came with the release of her album The Violet Hour, with the album going on to be one of Mojo’s top ten folk albums of the year in 2008.

The following year, Jackie won a remarkable two BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, and her album Hyperboreans received a nomination for the fRoots Critics’ Poll Album of the Year and reached number 5 on the Mojo Folk Album of the Year Chart.

Jackie’s new album Saturnine was released this month and is garnering rave reviews from music critics, with the Independent on Sunday saying that she “remains the sweetest voice of her generation of English folkies, a one-woman wisp of tragedy and dew intermingled”.

Elsewhere The Observer judges her fourth album “an exquisite piece of chamber folk, setting her lark-like tones to cascading piano, solemn viola and chiming handbells .... the stateliness of its music makes for an atmosphere of rare enchantment”.

Jackie Oates, who can be heard on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour on Monday, September 26, and on Radio 3’s World on 3 on Friday, September 30, will play Ludlow Assembly Rooms on Saturday, October 1, supported by local folk group Loxley.

To book online, go to ludlowassemblyrooms.

co.uk or call the box office on 01584 878141.

Right: Double Radio 2 folk awards winner Jackie Oates comes to Ludlow.