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Kathryn Tickell

News

Northumbrian Fantasia

Last night Kathryn’s new piece for the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain was premiered at The Sage Gateshead and will be performed again at the Royal Festival Hall, London, on Saturday 14 April. Kathryn describes composing for such a large orchestra as ‘being let loose in an amazing sweet shop’! More details can be found on the NYO blog with videos of Kathryn demonstrating the Northumbrian pipes and a tantalising extract of ‘Northumbrian Fantasia’ in rehearsal, with Charles Hazlewood conducting.

Spring Sale!

Please check the Shop section below where you’ll find the following CDs at a reduced rate. Some titles are to be deleted in the next few weeks, so if your collection really ought to be completed, do put in an order:

Back to the Hills, What We Do, Kathryn Tickell Band, Ensemble Mystical all at £9 (reduced from £13)
Melodeon Crimes (Julian Sutton) £8
Music for a New Crossing (with Andy Sheppard) £3 (EP)

State of the Arts

Kathryn is a guest speaker at State of the Arts, a national conference on arts and culture, on Tuesday 14th February at The Lowry, Salford UK, hosted by the Arts Council, the BBC, Salford City Council, Manchester City Council and the British Council. Among contributing artists and producers are broadcaster Kirsty Wark and Minister for Culture Ed Vaizey MP. You can post questions and comments at http://sotablog.artscouncil.org.uk and the Twitter hashtag is #sota12

Celtic Connections and other news

Northumbrian Voices at Celtic Connections, Glasgow, on 2 February is the last chance to see this incredible show before a handful of summer dates. If you manage to see the show in Glasgow please post a comment. In other news…

Kathryn has a new commission to compose for the National Youth Orchestra. This is part of a special programme of folk and classical music conducted by Charles Hazlewood, featuring the National Youth Orchestra and members of Bellowhead at the Southbank Centre, London, on 15 April.

As Artistic Director of Folkestra Kathryn is devising work and performing with the ensemble for the BT River of Music as part of the Cultural Olympiad in Gateshead on 15 June and in Trafalgar Square, London, on 22 July.

Just now Kathryn is working with Sting on the development of his new music theatre show The Last Ship.

Looking further ahead, Kathryn’s idea of a ‘Festival of the North East’ to celebrate the creativity of the region is scheduled for June 2013. She is joined by Lee Hall and Lauren Laverne as the project’s Artistic Advisers with Sage Gateshead playing a leading role in its organisation. The festival is timed to coincide with the arrival in Durham of the Lindisfarne gospels in June 2013.

Northumbrian Voices

If you’re at any of the Northumbrian Voices shows — Berwick, Liverpool, Cirencester, London — we’d love to hear from you. Please post a comment! Watch this space for news of touring work next year. Earliest information is always sent to the mailing list first, so if you’re not on the list, do sign up!

BBC Radio Scotland, 17 November

Kathryn is interviewed on BBC Radio Scotland’s Travelling Folk this Thursday, 17 November. She talks about her early musical influences, current favourite artists and her new show Northumbrian Voices.

Grainger Festival at The Sage Gateshead

The Sage Gateshead hosts a special Percy Grainger Festival this weekend. The festival spans three days and revisits some of the BBC Proms Grainger night with Northern Sinfonia and the Kathryn Tickell Band on Friday 11th November. Also some fascinating concerts such as Lincolnshire Posy, on Saturday 12th November, with songs collected by Grainger who dedicated his “bunch of wildflowers” to “the old folksingers who sang so sweetly to me.” Kathryn’s been working on this concert with the fabulous Folkestra who, with Mike Wilson (voice), Damien Barber (voice), Emily Portman (voice), David Murray (piano) and Eileen Bown (piano), promise a memorable evening. 

BBC Radio 4 Midweek, 12 October

Kathryn talks about Northumbrian Voices tomorrow on BBC Radio 4’s Midweek, live at 09.00 and repeated at 21.30. Some lovely comments from audience members at Chelmsford, Halesworth and Farnham recently. Hope to hear from more of you at performances coming up at The Stables Milton Keynes, Chipping Norton and Turner Sims Southampton.

Northumbrian Voices touring

Some lovely comments posted here from audience members at Chelmsford, Halesworth and Farnham – thank you!

Northumbrian Voices

If you’d like to come to one of the Northumbrian Voices shows touring the UK this autumn please  contact venues as soon as you can; some performances have sold out and others are getting very full. The show is based on recordings Kathryn’s done over the years with family members and the older generation of musicians from whom she learnt. Kathryn says, “It’s not just a nostalgic look back to the past though. Many of the people whose words we are using are still alive and very much of the modern age: my neighbour, my cousin — both Northumbrian farmers. When I play tunes I am very aware of their context and of the people I learnt the tunes from. I always wish that audiences could meet some of the people I learnt from — they were such characters — and this show feels as if we are letting those people speak.”  If you’re at Sage Gateshead this Friday or Saturday we’d love to know what you think about the show — please do post a comment! A few responses from the audience at a work in progress in August:

“Absolutely blown away… It was just terrific. So powerful.”

“So moving, so special.”

“A night I will remember for a long time. I was totally transfixed.”

“I was hooked from the first second. The whole piece was so rich and perfectly paced.”

 

The author David Almond (Skellig, Kit’s Wilderness) was moved to comment: “History, ecology, music, myth… the local and the universal. This is beautiful and important work.”

 

The ensemble:

Kathryn Tickell — Northumbrian pipes, fiddle, voice

Mike Tickell — voice

Kit Haigh — guitar, piano

Patsy Reid — fiddle

Julian Sutton — melodeon

Hannah Rickard – voice

 

Northumbrian Voices is directed by Kathryn Tickell and Annie Rigby (Unfolding Theatre) and is supported by Arts Council England.

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