Kathryn Tickell

Few musicians have brought wider attention to an instrument as regionally rooted as the Northumbrian small pipes, yet Kathryn Tickell achieved exactly that through the international reach of key releases such as The Gathering in 1997, Back to the Hills in 2002, and Northumbrian Voices in 2012. An accomplished fiddler as well, she has issued numerous recordings under her own name while also collaborating with Sting, Jon Lord, and the Chieftains, efforts that ultimately raised her instrument’s standing on the world stage.

Born in Northumberland in 1970 into a family steeped in local traditional music, she naturally followed that path, beginning the small pipes at age nine and claiming every pipe competition by thirteen while simultaneously establishing herself on the fiddle. Her debut album, On Kielderside, appeared in 1984, the same year she was appointed official piper to the Lord Mayor of Newcastle-upon-Tyne; by sixteen she had turned professional, issuing Borderlands—a collection of original and traditional material—and touring Europe. A U.K. documentary profiled her the following year, after which she continued forward with Common Ground. In 1990 she formed the Kathryn Tickell Band. Alongside further recordings she wrote theater music, presented BBC radio programs, and worked with the Penguin Café Orchestra, Sting (another Geordie), and the Chieftains, accomplishments notable for someone still in her late teens.

Her sixth album, The Gathering, arrived in 1997 to worldwide praise, yet she chose not to leverage it for broader celebrity. Instead she released The Northumberland Collection, featuring many local players, began teaching in regional schools, and in 1999 delivered Debateable Lands, an album drawn from English-Scottish border repertoire. Ensemble Mystical, launched in 2000, crossed numerous stylistic lines and produced the album of the same name; that project led to the live collaboration Music for a New Crossing with saxophonist Andy Sheppard in 2004. The next year the Kathryn Tickell Band appeared at the Promenade Concerts in London—the first traditional folk ensemble invited—and she accepted a part-time lectureship in folk and traditional music at Newcastle University. Over the subsequent three years she issued five albums: The Sky Didn’t Fall and Strange But True (both 2006), Instrumental (2007), Durham Concerto with Deep Purple’s Jon Lord (2008), and What We Do with Peter Tickell (2008). She rejoined Sting for his 2009 album If on a Winter’s Night and that same year received The Queen’s Medal for Music, given for outstanding contributions to British music.

In the following years she undertook several commissions, among them a substantial contribution to Alex Wilson’s “Compass Suite” for the inaugural Summer Solstice festival at Canary Wharf in June and a pipes-and-piano piece for Joanna MacGregor. These led to a 2011 commission to compose new work and curate a program for the Bath International Festival with MacGregor. Later that year she curated, presented, and performed in a BBC Proms Percy Grainger evening and developed her music-theater piece Northumbrian Voices, which toured the U.K. before she recorded and released the double-length album of the same name in 2012.

Afterward she assembled the touring group Kathryn Tickell & the Side, comprising cellist Louisa Tuck, harpist Ruth Wall, accordionist Amy Thatcher, and herself on Northumbrian pipes and fiddle; the ensemble recorded a self-titled 2013 album that incorporated their interpretations of works by Henry Purcell and Percy Grainger alongside traditional and original tunes. The band toured for more than two years. On returning to the studio Tickell enlisted collaborators including her father Mike Tickell, Bob Fox, the Unthanks, Superfolkus, and Hannah Rickard. The resulting album, Water of Tyne, contains thirteen tracks thematically centered on the River Tyne, ranging from faithful renditions of classics such as “The Water of Tyne” to jazz-inflected pieces such as “Song for a River at Night.”

Her ongoing drive for reinvention produced Kathryn Tickell & the Darkening, featuring Thatcher on accordion and synth, fiddler and charango player Kate Young, percussionist Cormac Byrne, Kieran Szifris on octave mandolin, and drummer Joe Truswell. The group recorded Hollowbone, an electrified set spanning twenty-first-century post-punk and garage-folk production to reimagined traditional material. Embracing a global outlook, Hollowbone juxtaposed some of the oldest Northumbrian melodies—including one associated with Emperor Hadrian’s favorite musician—with new compositions, all unified by contemporary resonance. Hollowbone appeared in March 2019.