 | | Reviews | | |  KATHRYN TICKELL BAND
Air Dancing
Park Records PRKCD72
Not as a rule a great fan of the Northumbrian pipes, preferring the deeper, wilder sound of their Irish cousin, but when they're wielded by Kathryn Tickell it's impossible not to make an exception. Seems only a heartbeat since Kathryn was vanguard of the mass of fresh young musicians that we nowadays take for granted but, amazingly, it's twenty years since she released her first album at the age of sixteen. Ten albums later - not to mention the global tours, radio and TV work, composition commissions, founding of music trusts, playing with Sting and other major collaborative projects - she's quietly become the Grand Dame of the UK instrumental scene.
The current incarnation of the 1990-inaugurated Kathryn Tickell Band is a corker. Making beautiful music with Tickell's magical piping and fiddling are the guitars and bass of ex-Tarras man Joss Clapp, the melodeon of Julian Sutton and the fiddle/viola of brother Peter Tickell. This is Arrangements-To-Die-For Inc, with brilliant renditions of several traditional tunes but real paydirt in the self-composed and other contemporary material. Two of a gorgeous trilogy of waltzes are Tickell sibling-penned; Clapp's Long Grass and Redders are warm and elegiac while Sutton earns his 'Picasso of the melodeon' sobriquet with a leg-plaitingly abstract composition, Winding Sideways (cue Cossack horsemen and mustachioed acrobats) and The Bar Is Ruaridh, part of a superbly-segued combo of tunes with weird names and high grin-factor.
Occasional percussion courtesy of Donald Hay is extremely tasteful and enhances both rolling, hypnotic melodies (Rory Campbell's Wild Berries) and stirring, organic pieces (Music For A New Crossing (part 2)), composed by Kathryn and sax player Andy Sheppard to commemorate the opening of the Gateshead Millennium Bridge). An outstanding twin-fiddle marathon set precedes Air Moving, a moving slow air written for late percussionist Bruce Arthur. From infectiously danceable to immensely emotional, every tune is a gem. A multi-tempo, multi-mood album with a single-minded brilliance.
Mel McClellan - November 2004
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 I bought the album at the first gig of the recent tour. I had won a ticket to the gig, so I drove the 300 miles from Newcastle to Blackheath. It was so well worth the trip. Being from the North East I am very familiar with the Northumbrian pipes and I am not always a fan. Kathryn is the exception because she plays with such a great sense of time, melody and rhythm (not always a strong feature in Northumbrian piping). Joss Clapp's guitar work, both at the gig and on the album, is superb, with great and varied technique. Peter and Julian were both predictably superb throughout. Air Dancing is a strong contender for my album of the year.
Maurice Condie, Newcastle upon Tyne | | | |
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Folk & Acoustic
