TALENTED young musicians who help keep folk traditions alive are preparing to head stateside and continue a blossoming transatlantic musical exchange.
The Northumbrian Ranters – a collection of students from 12 Northumberland schools – will jet off to the Big Apple later this month to promote traditional music and their home county’s heritage.
The 47-member ensemble, which was set up in 2007, plays a varied repertoire of Northumbrian, Scottish and Irish music on Northumbrian pipes, fiddles, cellos, flutes, keyboards, guitars and concertina.
It has recently added a number of vocal performances to its repertoire, and also has a clog-dancing section.
Later this month, 37 members of the group will fly to New York for a 10-day tour, which follows a previous visit to the USA in 2008.
The young Ranters will be greeted by their hosts, local group The Strawberry Hill Fiddlers, who visited Northumberland in June last year after a link was first forged back in 2007.
They will then travel on to Vermont to hook up with another local band, The Fiddle Heads, and perform at a number of concerts, workshops and educational trips around the Burlington area.
The trip, which runs from March 28 to April 6, has been paid for through parental contributions, fundraising efforts by the Ranters and donations from a number of organisations and trusts. The group meets monthly to rehearse and has performances lined up over the next few months at venues such as Alnwick Playhouse, Newcastle’s St Nicholas Cathedral and Bamburgh Castle.
Jacky Craig, course leader with the Northumbrian Ranters, said the USA trip will renew existing friendships and help continue the transatlantic link.
“We are all about introducing young people to traditional music and keeping the old tunes going. We do modern stuff as well as older, traditional things, and we have built up this connection with the Strawberry Hills Fiddlers in New York. While we are over there we will be doing lots of concerts and visits to schools.
“We will also be promoting Northumberland because the group members wear Northumbrian tartan and we start the concerts with Northumbrian pipes.”
Musical director Richard Johnstone added: “The students have all been working hard in the run-up to this exciting trip, not only practising for the concerts but also fundraising to pay for it. We’re look- ing forward to meeting up with the American musicians once again and performing overseas should be great experience for our young group.”
The trip has been supported financially by Ponteland Town Council, Morpeth Ro- tary Club, Northumbrian Pipers’ Society, Alnwick Lions, pharmaceutical group Covance and the Sir James Knot Foundation.
