A huge thank you to all our artists, sponsors, attendees and crew for the fantastic return to our live format at this year’s festival. We enjoyed another sell-out event, welcomed Mark Hummel back to the UK for the first time in over twenty years, held our first Trade Expo, and raised £735 for our chosen charity, Wishing Well Music, providing bedside music therapy for children in critical care.
In addition, we launched our first ever Harmonicas for Health workshop and symposium, which proved to be a popular and humbling new feature to the event programme. Watch this space for news of HBTS 2024 and, in the meantime, visit our YouTube Channel to enjoy coverage of this year’s artists and activities.
You may be aware that early on Friday morning this year our Festival Producer, Richard Taylor, was already launching proceedings in the company of BBC Radio Sussex reporter Hanna Neter.
Hanna was challenged by Breakfast Show host Alison Fearns to learn and perform her first ever harmonica tune live on air. Richard and Hanna duly got to work and within half an hour Hanna was playing When The Saints Go Marching In! You can hear what everyone got up to right here…
2023 Information Downloads…
Schedule Times
Official Programme (hard copies at registration)
A3 Poster / A4 Poster / A6 Flyer
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Following our ground breaking online festival in 2021, when we celebrated 10 years of harmonica history with a review of our stunning past guest artists, HBTS took a year off in 2022. HBTS was back live in 2023, with its twelfth fantastic festival and another stunning programme of workshops, guests artists, trade sponsors, kids workshop and afternoon blues jams. We were also delighted to announce our inaugural Harmonicas For Healing symposium, directed by Christ Startup, and the return of our world famous prize charity raffle!
Turn up. Dig it. Tell all your friends!
Please contribute to our event fund here
Please donate whatever you can to our event fund by clicking here or on the target logo at the side. Money raised goes to our artists, our charity appeal and also facilitates future HBTS events.
A breath of fresh air…
And here’s a retrospective on some of the shenanigans HBTS has been up to in recent years. Here we are on BBC Radio 4‘s harmonica documentary Suck It And See.
And a reminder of the special message that Paul Jones of Manfred Mann broadcast on his weekly BBC Radio 2 blues hour for HBTS 2016…
Missed the party or just need another hit?
You can catch up as we roll out footage of Harpin’ By The Sea 2021 on YouTube. Please note this process is engineered voluntarily and we thank you for your patience as it takes shape. You can check everything out at Harpin’ By The Sea’s own Channel and at Russ Turner’s Oxharp Channel.