POIGNANT folk-inspired melodies and rootsy grooves will be the order of the day when the Alison Rayner Quintet come to town.

The group will perform at the Sound Cellar, Poole, on March 23.

Their music is bursting with melodic and harmonic references from jazz, classical and folk musics.

Rayner cites both Charlie Haden and Eberhard Weber as influences – but there is always a strong sense of Rayner’s musical personality

evident in the poignant folk-inspired melodies, rootsy grooves, Hendrix stoked guitar in Mayday and improvisational invention.

Alison said: ‘I was inspired to call the album A Magic Life because of two recent incidents.

"The loss of a friend last year, who wrote in her own epitaph about how magic her life had been; then a chance encounter with a young boy,

who asked me "Is music stronger than magic?" I replied that to me, music is a merging of magic and logic.

"These events set me on a course of thinking about connections between memory, mortality, magic – and music.’

In the quintet, Alison Rayner has gathered a group of musicians who sympathetically support her music.

The group’s imaginative and assured playing are superbly suited to Rayner’s compositions and reflect a confidence inspired by working

intensively together, touring their first album August.

Tickets can be bought for £10 on the door.

*The Alison Rayner Quintet, Sound Cellar, Poole, 8.30pm.