* OUR favourite blues night goes all Nordic this coming week with an appearance by one of Europe’s finest guitarists.

Described as Finland’s Queen Of The Slide Guitar, Erja Lyytinen, above, is an incredible performer, and returns to Oxford’s Famous Monday Blues with a new album.

Although she has been compared to Bonnie Raitt, Kuopio-born Erja is more than just a talented exponent of bottleneck blues. She is also a dab hand at the dobro and a wizard at other guitar styles. She is touring in support of new long-player Forbidden Fruit.

Don’t miss this chance to see this cool Nordic blues heroine on our own chilly shores. She plays the Jericho Tavern, in Walton Street, Oxford, on Monday. Tickets are £12 from wegottickets.com

* Modern Art Oxford continues its mission of hosting high quality live music with a trio of gorgeous-sounding artists on Saturday.

Headlining is folk guitarist James Blackshaw, whose complex and beautiful swirling compositions are meditative in quality and cinematic in scope. This outrageously-talented finger-picking,12-string acoustic guitarist is joined by ToLiesel front man Jack Olchawski’s solo acoustic project My Crooked Teeth; and Humphrey ‘Huck’ Astley, the former frontman of Huck and The Handsome Fee, and bassist with Oxford alt-country band The Epstein. Tickets are £6 in advance, or £8 on the door from modernartoxford.org.uk

 * There is more folky string action this coming week from a clutch of female fiddlers.

Going under the name The Fiddle Girls, Bella Hardy, Eliza Carthy, Lucy Farrell and Kate Young were brought together by the musician Kathryn Tickell for a pair of concerts. But the results were so impressive they stuck together, released an album Laylam, and are now touring.

They play the Theatre, Chipping Norton on Sunday, then The Cornerstone, Didcot, next Thursday. The Chippy show is sold out, but tickets for Didcot are available at cornerstone-arts.org or on 01235 515144