Promoting her live-in-lockdown album The St Buryan Sessions, Cornwall-based singer-songwriter Sarah McQuaid is due to perform at The Arc.

The performance will be on Saturday, January 20 at 7.30pm. 

Born in Spain to a Spanish father and American mother, Sarah grew up in Chicago, touring the US and Canada as a member of The Chicago Children’s Choir.

In the mid-1990s she made her way to Ireland, where her authorship of The Irish DADGAD Guitar Book led to invitations to write regular music columns and reviews for Hot Press magazine and Dublin’s Evening Herald.

Following her move in 2007 to Cornwall, she swiftly struck up a friendship with a fellow mum outside the gates of their children’s school. That fellow mum turned out to be Zoë Pollock, writer and performer of 1991 single Sunshine On A Rainy Day.

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The pair soon found themselves co-writing songs for an album released in 2008 under the band name Mama.

Sarah said: “I owe Zoë a massive debt of gratitude for getting me into songwriting in a serious way. Prior to that I’d thought of myself basically as a folksinger who happened to write an occasional song, but through working with Zoë I not only learned a hell of a lot about the craft of songwriting, but also just the fact of someone of her calibre wanting to co-write with me was what finally gave me the confidence to start focusing on my own original material.”

Tickets cost £14 in advance and £16 on the door. For more details, visit arcwinchester.org.uk/booking?id=658201.