Wellington City Libraries

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Marg Layton

Decade(s) active:

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Music we hold — on our catalogue

The majority of our Wellington CD collection is available from our Te Awe Branch in Brandon St, or able to be reserved for free from our Distribution Centre in Johnsonville.

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Marg Layton is one of New Zealand’s foremost blues performers. Born in New Zealand’s Deep South, Marg began her musical career in the folk music café scene of the late 1960s, first in Christchurch, then in other parts of the country.

Throughout the seventies and eighties she performed at every major folk venue, mixing traditional and contemporary folk songs with a growing interest in blues and gospel. During this period she opened concerts for such international touring artists as Country Joe McDonald, Don McLean, Odetta and Tom Paxton.

A visit to the United States in 1980 led to a meeting with The Grand Old Lady of the Blues, Alberta Hunter. The recently rediscovered 1920s blues legend provided new inspiration and led to a greater emphasis on the blues in Marg’s repertoire.

Since then she has taken the music of her blues heroes and heroines the length and breadth of New Zealand, and appears regularly at major arts and music festivals. Recent appearances have included The 2003 Manawatu International Jazz and Blues Festival, Wellington’s 2004 Cuba Street Carnival and the Wellington Jazz Club in June 2004.

Marg specialises in concert performances, drawing on a variety of styles from sophisticated jazz settings to raw, earthy country blues, and occasionally reverts to her first love, traditional and contemporary folk, for contrast.

Marg has been based in New Zealand’s capital city, Wellington, since 1973. With more than three decades of live performance to her credit, she continues to attract and work with the crème de la crème of New Zealand’s blues, jazz and folk musicians.


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