Alistair Anderson

Live at the Folklincs HUMBERFEST Festival 2025

English Concertina & Northumbrian Pipes 

As a touring soloist, with no less than 37 tours of the USA, 5 trips to Australia and countless European tours to his credit, Alistair Anderson is internationally acknowledged as a master of the English Concertina and a fine exponent of the Northumbrian Pipes. He delights audiences with the lyrical slow airs and lively dance tunes of Northumberland and with his own compositions, which have grown out of his love of traditional music.

“His appeal as a musician lies not only in his remarkable handling of the English Concertina and Northumbrian Pipes. It is also a result of his total involvement in his music, his absolute sincerity, which succeeds in reaching a far wider audience than his classification as a folk musician would suggest.”    
The Stage 

“The pleasure comes chiefly from the excellence of the playing; that particular delight which comes from anything superbly done. The concertina emerges as a flexible and sensitive instrument; in the hands of a player of Anderson’s quality it is amazing what it can achieve.”          
The Guardian

“He remains one of this country’s most majestic and inclusive instrumentalists” 
Colin Irwin fROOTS 

A “Musical Catalyst”
Anderson’s passionate belief that traditional music has an important place in contemporary society led him to find ways to excite a new generation of young musicians and draw them into playing, singing, dancing and making the tradition their own. 

He poured huge amounts of energy into this work through Folkworks, which he founded in 1986, and the folk music degree at Newcastle University, which he launched in 2001. 

Alongside this work he continued to perform as a soloist and: 

• He took his great friends and mentors, the retired shepherds, now sadly deceased, Will Atkinson, Willy Taylor and Joe Hutton to concerts and festivals the length and breadth of the country.
• He wrote and performed music for a leading string quartet, for professional theatre, for amateur orchestra, for youth groups even for an ensemble of ancient Chinese instruments.
• He collaborated with jazz musicians and wrote for a mixed ensemble of Northumbrian and Moravian musicians.

The success of his varied performance and composing work grows out of his deep understanding of traditional music balanced with an adventurous sense of its constantly changing nature and creative potential. 

Although maintaining close links with Newcastle University and The Sage Gateshead, Anderson has now handed on his main responsibilities there to the next generation and thus has more time to devote to performing and creating new music. As the musical world gradually returned too “normality” after Covid, Anderson did his first concert back at Warkworth Village Hall to reopen their regular concert series. 

In October 2022 he and his great friend, the amazing banjo player, Dan Walsh were commissioned to work with a singer and tabla player from Kashmir to produce a cross cultural concert for the annual Folk Expo Festival in Manchester. In July 2023 Alistair produced his 75th Birthday Bash concert at Sage Gateshead to raise funds for bursaries for the Folkworks Youth Summer School. Anderson was joined on stage by a fantastic array of guests including Kathryn Tickell, Nancy Kerr, Dan Walsh and Bradley Creswick, leader emeritus of Royal Northern Sinfonia.

Alistair’s new CD Hethpool Linn was released in August 2023 including a free bonus CD of Hidden Hexham a piece he wrote for a community folk band some years earlier (see below) “Anderson’s playing is as intricate and skilled as ever…. Wild Geese Over Wooler is an extended, evocative piece reflecting great flocks of geese in their annual migration. The album is splendid my favourite part of the package is the bonus CD, Hidden Hexham with fiddles, cello, flute, pipes and guitar a thoroughly enjoyable twenty five minutes of music”   Ian Croft - Rock and Reel 2023

January 2024 saw Anderson touring with saxophonist extraordinaire Snake Davis and bassist Don Richardson with a very eclectic mix of jazz, folk and rock even rounding off with everyone singing along to Hey Jude led on Northumbrian pipes! The success of this tour led to a repeat min tour early in 2025.
Humberfest 2025
Friday Evening in the Ropery Hall  8pm
Saturday Afternoon in the Estuary Room 1pm
Workshop: Northumbrian Tunes (More info to folllow).