Kathryn Tickell is widely acclaimed as the world’s foremost exponent of the Northumbrian pipes. She is a composer, performer, educator and successful recording artist whose work is deeply rooted in the landscape and people of Northumbria. Kathryn’s extraordinary career began with learning tunes from old shepherd friends and family, and evolved to traverse genres from jazz and world music to large-scale orchestral works. She has released 15 of her own albums to date and has recorded and performed with The Chieftains, Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Jon Lord, Evelyn Glennie, London Sinfonietta, Sting, and many others. In 2009, she received The Queen’s Medal for Music, awarded to those deemed to have made an outstanding contribution to British music and in 2015 awarded the OBE for services to folk music. Kathryn also tours with her folk-classical quartet, The Side, and collaborates with the writer David Almond, continuing to explore and cultivate her bountiful native heritage of Northumberland.

‘I can’t remember feeling so exhilarated by such a match of music and landscape.’ The Times (on Kathryn’s Northumbrian Voices).

Winners of the 2016 BBC Radio 2 Folk Award for Best Original Track, The Rheingans Sisters make playful, powerful and richly connecting music that is wholly contemporary while deeply anchored in folk traditions. Drawing on their pan-European musical scholarship (having studied extensively in France, Sweden and Norway) and their spirited mission to make connections between the music of different geographical roots, they have developed a rich artistic approach to the deconstruction and reimagining of traditional music alongside their own beguiling compositions.