MERCURY Music Prize nominee Kathryn Williams is teaming up with film music composer, session player and member of a famous musical clan, Neill MacColl, in a new partnership that will play Pocklington Arts Centre on April 12.

Kathryn and Neill first met at the Daughters of Albion concert - part of the BBC's Folk Britannia season - where they had been paired to perform The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face: the ballad that Neill's father, Ewan MacColl, wrote for his mother, Peggy Seeger.

"We just clicked, " says Kathryn.

"Within a few hours of first saying 'hello' to each other, we were saying 'yeah, lets get together and make a record', which was both strange and kind of liberating."

"A while later I went to stay with Kathryn up in Newcastle, " says Neill. "We locked ourselves in a room for a few days and the songs just poured out of us. The way we write and play together is like we're both steering the same ship - the most natural and instinctive way."

Kathryn agrees: "It was like when I first started playing music with people; there was just an openness between us and a real love of playing together. I haven't enjoyed making music this much for years."

Kimberley Roo offered his countryside studio to the pair and in only six days, they recorded 21 songs; 13 of those now form their debut album, Two, scheduled for release on Kathryn's label, Caw Records, on March 3.