Output details

Northumbrian Voices

Northumbrian Voices is a double CD of live performances, bringing together new compositions, traditional tunes, and song and fieldwork recordings of oral histories. Although oral testimony has been used in musical performance before, this particular set of elements is combined here for the first time, making an innovative research contribution within its field, in terms of both its content and mode of presentation.

The CD was recorded live at Cecil Sharp House, London during the second national tour of Northumbrian Voices and conveys the work's conception as a semi-staged musical performance. The spoken component is extracted from recordings Kathryn Tickell made over several years, including conversations with shepherds and farmers in Northumberland, some of them musicians. Shepherd Willie Taylor (1916–2000) was an exceptional fiddler and composer of tunes, and is regarded as highly representative of the Northumbrian repertoire. Other seminal figures of Northumbrian music – Billy Ballantine, Dick Moscrop, Will Atkinson – are present through their words, their music or the words of people who remember them.

The work is an instantiation of oral transmission, where three generations of Northumbrian musicians enact on stage the social, cultural and musical pursuits of a changing society. In devising the stage show, Tickell sought the assistance of theatre director Annie Rigby – a new collaboration and direction for Tickell’s research practice. Additionally, author David Almond advised on matters of framing and presenting the work.

Extensive research and a deep understanding of the social and cultural context of the collected material underpinned the work, seeking levels of authenticity and authority seldom attempted in a professionally produced, commercial product. This work is instrumental in shifting creative paradigms for addressing a tradition creatively, with 40 performances in the UK and one in Norway.