February Programme
2000
Keeping music alive in the
Allen Valley
Excellent . . . Good . . .
Fair . . . Indifferent . . . Always Live
Live Music
and
Welcome to
it!
Scroll Down to See Current
Offerings
..
Friday 4th February
MUSIC NIGHT!
These nights are such a joy -- they keep on getting better and better! Always a delight to welcome old friends and familiar faces, and invigorating to appreciate new entertainers and audience as well.
Tx only £1.00 and 50p concessions, and we throw in the fire, the candles, and our promotional literature for free. Don't forget there's always a raffle, and we do value everybody's support!
Friday February
11th
MICHAEL
MARRA
Press clippings are all very well, and Micheal Marra has some of the very best we've seen, but the real truth of the entertainer is what happens live on the night. And based on Michael's sensational appearance at Edinburgh's Hogmanay 2000, it looks like a brilliant night when he appears at The King's Head in Allendale.
It's no wonder that tickets are already going fast for this sensational entertainer, who has been called a twenty-five year overnight sensation. Although he's paid his musical dues, and with none other recently than Deacon Blue, and his songs have been covered by everyone from Kidi Dee, Maddy Prior, June Tabor, Leo Sayer and Frankie Miller, his music is as kicking and fresh as when it first erupted.
" He rocks, he's smart, and his tunes walk a razor's edge of wit. A man with piercing eyes, Marra looks into the soul, his songs as big as life." "Marra's music is soaked in the Scottish experience, strained through a gauze of ragtime blues-piano and shot with filaments of traditional folk and American voices" . . . " as a ghostly white visage sits at the piano and microphone delivering caustic visions of the Scottish past and wickedly funny, or achingly poignant, parables of the present in vocals from a Woodbined voice".
Some call him the Scottish Jacques Brel, others the Randy Newman of the North, still others might imagine him as Scotland's definitive answer to Tom Waits, but however you define him,(and the truth is he's one of a kind), he's definitely worth a serious listen, if you're at all serious about the live music you listen to. You can book tickets for only £4.00 by calling the promoters, Northumbrian Music Nights, at (01434) 685047, or take your chances and pay a fiver at the door. But don't say we didn't warn you if you can't get in!
Tickets only £4.00 by
advance
reservation, (01434) 685047
but £5.00 at the door
What we said
about Michael Marra
Saturday February 19th
Saturday February 19th
9:00 pm
The King's Head,
Allendale
ATTENTION
The Chris Wood Trio
[GIG CANCELLED]
Chris Wood has broken his
leg, and the show at the King's Head is cancelled -- we are
hoping to be able to re-schedule when appropriate -- in the
meantime, all our best wishes to Chris with hopes for a
speedy recovery!
As part of a program promoting adventurous traditional music making, the English Acoustic Collective in conjunction with the Arts Council of England is touring the Chris Wood trio.
Nick Cooper's background is with the London Sinfonia Orchestra, and latterly with the Balanescu Quartet, John Surman and a recent tour with contemporary jazz trio Equal Interest. If you love cello, (and who doesn't remember the brillliant sounds of one of our favourite cellists, Peter Grayling who played the King's with Katrina Olsen) then you'll want to catch Nick's superb playing -- oh yes, he's also contributed to several Oasis tracks!
Clare Salaman is a period performance specialist and has worked with English Concert and the Academy of Ancient Music. She performs in the trio on both violin and hurdy gurdy, and that's an instrument we haven't heard upstairs in the intimate function room for some time!
Chris Wood performs on the English and international folk circuit with Andy Cutting, Martin Carthy, and has recently written for choir and chamber orchestra. Chris is known to many in the region for his excellent Folkworks workshops, and his following have been burning up the telephone lines booking tickets already. With his fiddle, guitar and the occasional vocal, Chris is sure to thrill in Allendale on February 19th.
So we just know you'll want to make a special point of getting to this ver special concert, where classical music meets the tradition, and brilliant sparks are sent off into the stratosphere. If Dvorak and Stravinsky can do it, to say nothing of Elgar, well then, at the beginning of the new millenium, why can't we accommodate a fusion of the two genres as well!
Look for an inspired evening, and you won't be far wrong. Our only problem in promoting this gig, really, is holding ourselves back from too much gushing before the event. It looks superb, awesome, really.
Booking is advised, the room is small: (01434)
685047
Friday February
25th
Friday February 25th
SESSION
NIGHT!
We're embarking on a new plan for the 4th Friday of each month throughout this winter quarter, with a special view to giving the hard-working volunteer bar staff a bit of a break for one weekend of the month. By popular demand we're following up on the popular instrumental workshops Folkworks has helped initiate in our local middle school, and laying on a profesional tutor for an hour's tutelage prior to the session proper. We'll be expecting to be overrun with aspiring musicians old and young, but we'd hate to alienate the singers who make our regular music nights so great -- so we're ensuring that everybody gets a chance to participate by adding in a song spot for when the instrumentalists need a break!
Just which instrument will be featured, in our professionally -led workshop before the session, is yet to be determined, but we're working on it. This looks like a great opportunity to engage with the rigours of timing and tune structure, and then let it all hang loose and play with the best of them. When the players need a bit of a break, we'll probably let some songs slip through, if any singists show up.
Workshop £1.00 7:30
followed by Session from 8:30
King's Head
£1./50p
Saturday 26th
February
ALLENDALE VILLAGE HALL
with fully licensed bar
Doors open 7:30
Bùrach
Consider just where this 'beyond the Battlefield Band' group have travelled last year: a major tour of Ireland, featuring at the Cross Culture Music Festival in County Clare; a first tour of the USA last summer, then back home for tours throughout Scotland, the Jersey Folk Festival, Sweden and Norway's Northlands Festival, as well as Turkey and of course at Edinburgh's Hogmanay 2000.
Consider where they'll be in 2000: for January, a return trip to the Far East, including Bangkok and Hong Kong; for February a Middle East tour, and also an important stop-over in Allendale; four tours of the USA and Canada; tours of Belgium and Holland, Australia, Scandinavia, Germany, Italy, France -- well, it's incredible, and the list goes on and on.
So we think that the Allendale gig is in pretty impressive company. And what music! When they played last at The King's Head, the feeling was just intense. Not that we'd want to frighten you, but there was such a feeling of loss when each number faded away -- you wanted this music to go on and on forever. And it's no wonder, with powerhouse individuals like Sandy Brechin, manic accordianist who could light a spark in any venue, or Gregor Borland on electric fiddle, who was the brilliant bass guitar and harmony fiddle with The Kathryn Tickell Band, or the beautiful Ali Cherry on lead vocals, who brings an air of sophistication and her heart-breaking voice to help round out the group's sound. And what a sound! Add in Doug Anderson on guitars and mandolin, and of course the big rhythm section in the form of percussionist Eoghain Anderson and Roy Waterston on bass, and you've got major contemporary popular music in the traditional idiom.
Ever wonder why groups like say, The Corrs are so popular? Maybe it's because they have a brilliant grounding in that traditional music that we all love. Listen to Bùrach, and you'll hear that same tradition, in a brilliant popular realisation for an infectious good time, and why not?
I