PROFILE Star quality takes the tradition forward Photo: John Slavin @ designfolk.com PIPING TODAY • 18 PROFILE KATHRYN TICKELL HE bright-sounding bellows-blown KATHRYN TICKELL, Northumbrian bagpipes, with their robed to receive her Hon- Tparallel-bore, stopped-end chanters and keys-enhanced range, have a musical orary Doctorate from the voice that has been gathering growing inter- University of Northumbria est, not least from folk groups and session artists. last year… “One of Kath- They have a long history, surviving some- ryn’s most important and times precariously within a local playing enduring contributions is as community, but they also have changed with the times and, most recently, have been interna- a composer. Her work is root- tionally showcased on concert stages with fl air ed in the musical thinking and conviction by several star-quality perform- and practice of Northum- ers, the most popular and prominent of whom continues to be the musically radiant Kathryn berland, but it is also highly Derran Tickell, a piper and fi ddler with more innovative in harmony, in that 20 years of professional performance and rhythm and arrangement. 14 albums to her credit. In 1990, she formed the four-piece Kathryn Her music has been described Tickell Band and, with the band or with her as ‘a force for renewal, trans- brother, Peter, on fi ddle, or alone, has played forming traditional music all over Britain, and toured regularly in Europe, North America, Africa, Asia and Australia. She from within the tradition’.” has performed in venues ranging from small Photo: University of Northumbria village halls to the Edinburgh Festival, Carnegie composer and conductor Sir Peter Maxwell of local musicians such as Willie Taylor, Will Hall, The South Bank Centre, The Barbican Davies, Master of the Queen’s Music: “in ad- Atkinson, Joe Hutton, Richard Moscrop, Billy and at the European Parliament, and worked miration and respect for her work in making Pigg and Tom Hunter. with performers like The Chieftains, The Boys her home county come alive with a re-awakened She grew up in the 1970s, attending schools of the Lough, and Sting. awareness of its own musical heritage, and of variously in Tynemouth, North Shields and In 1997 Kathryn Tickell founded the Young inexhaustible developments and transforma- Newcastle but with a strengthening attachment Musicians’ Fund to help young people in the tions of its traditions.” to the rural community of Warksburn in west North East realise their musical potential. She In July 2007, she was awarded an Honorary Northumberland where her parents’ families is a part-time lecturer on Bachelor of Music Doctorate by University of Northumbria for had farmed and shepherded. (Honours) in Folk and Traditional Music her “outstanding and inspirational achieve- “I think that, if I hadn’t been born into the programme at Newcastle University, and, since ments”. Said the citation for the award: “One family I was, I probably wouldn’t have ended 2002, has been the artistic director of Folkestra, of Kathryn’s most important and enduring up playing the pipes,” she said. “My mother’s Sage Gateshead’s youth folk ensemble, a project contributions is as a composer. Her work is maiden name is Kathleen Robson. Robson’s a to help develop the talent of young musicians, rooted in the musical thinking and practice of name that’s all over the Border region, and she aged 14-19. Northumberland, but it is also highly innova- has a very strong identity in the valley where she In 2005, Kathryn Tickell was named “Musi- tive in harmony, in rhythm and arrangement. was born and brought up: her family’s been in cian of the Year” at BBC Radio 2’s Folk Awards. Her music has been described as ‘a force for that valley for 600 years and is related to every- And, in October the following year, The Sage renewal, transforming traditional music from body. She has a very strong sense of history and Gateshead music centre was the venue for within the tradition’.” it’s in her family that the tradition lies. the premiere performance of Kettletoft Inn, Kathryn Tickell was introduced to the pipes “My dad’s family came from County a 20-minute work for Northumbrian pipes when she was nine years’ old. Her father, Mike Durham, miners coming up to work in the and ensemble that was written as a tribute to Tickell, was closely involved with a traditional Northumberland pits, then they got into Kathryn Tickell by the distinguished English music scene that respected an older generation shepherding and farming and joined the same PIPING TODAY • 19 PROFILE CAPE BRETON community as my mum’s family. Coming in from the outside, they were more aware of the tradition. They were more performers, so my dad would be singing and doing recitations and my grand-dad would be doing the same and playing the violin and accordion — and the church organ — and any chance they got to perform, they’d be up there. “My mum’s lot would be sitting quietly at the back. But they had the tradition. “So I got tradition from one side and per- formance from the other, and that was a good combination.” Soon after Kathryn Tickell began learning the Northumbrian pipes, she joined the Nor- thumbrian Pipers Society. “There were a few pipers around when I started,” said Kathryn Tickell. “It felt like quite a big scene but then I was very small. “There weren’t very many young people playing at that time, though. There was me and a lad just a few years older than me, Chris Ormiston — a fantastic piper. And it was great for me to have Chris there. He was a bit better than me and always used to beat me in the competitions and that gave me reasons to practise more. And, for Chris, he knew there was someone else hot on his heels and I think it helped to push him on as well. It was useful for both of us, I think.” By the time she was 13, Kathryn Tickell had won all of the traditional open smallpipes competitions, and was also making a name as a fiddle player in the Shetland style she learned from the Shetland fiddle virtuoso Tom An- derson at Stirling University’s traditional folk Photo: Derek Maxwell summer school. “At Pipers’ Society meetings and events, you’d KATHRYN TICKELL in concert… “I sometimes meet old friends be encouraged to play the tunes with variations back home and I hear, ‘you young ‘uns, you play everything too fast that are a big part of the old Northumbrian apart from the slow ones and you play them too slow’. But it works piping repertoire: old tunes written before 1800 that used just the eight notes that were available in a concert setting. We do a lot of arrangement in the band and a before keys were put on the instrument. And lot of batting about of timings and harmonies. I’m not doing that as there’d be these tunes with loads of variations. That was really encouraged within the society a commercial thing. I’m doing it because it’s what I really enjoy; it and it was great; they’re fantastic tunes. appeals to me and I get excited by playing the music in that way.” “But, as well as the Pipers’ Society, I was very lucky because there’s a lot of traditional music it was a very different thing. They’d be playing that was really very important.” on my mother’s side of the family, including a much the same sort of music as the fiddlers. While her grandparents did not play the few pipers: not people who were going out and “When we went to a relative’s house, my dad pipes, Kathryn Tickell now wonders whether doing concerts but people who were more a part would always bring the conversation around to she did not under-rate their knowledge. “They of the tradition and playing quite a different traditions and tunes and songs. And if anyone were brought up listening to a lot of piping and repertoire from the Pipers’ Society. was in that house that maybe used to play the I only realised that a little too late to make the “They were more like what we’d call the fiddle years and years ago, he would make them best of it,” she said. ‘country pipers’, playing more dance tunes and get the fiddle out and have a tune with me, and “I’ve got this old recording that has about ten PIPING TODAY • 20 PROFILE different pipers on it, all recorded in the 1940s “We do a lot of arrangement in the band and “Then I found a couple of other notes I and 1950s. I played it to my grand-dad Robson a lot of batting about of timings and harmonies. hadn’t had before and started writing all these and he named every single piper on it. I was I’m not doing that as a commercial thing. I’m tunes with these extra notes in them and amazed and asked him how did that. He said he doing it because it’s what I really enjoy; it ap- couldn’t go back to the Archie Dagg set… and just knew: ‘I’ve heard them; I know what they peals to me and I get excited by playing the that was it. So I went onto my Mike Nelson sound like’. He was saying things like, ‘that’ll music in that way. You do sometimes have to pipes which he very kindly gave me for my 21st be Diana’.