Folk Songs

There are few more reliable guarantees of quality in any form of contemporary music than if the name Kronos appears on the tin. Perhaps best known for their interpretations of minimalists such as Reich, Riley, Glass and Arvo Pärt, the quartet also has a proud record in world music collaborations, ranging from Astor Piazzolla to Asha Bhosle.

This album is a journey into Appalachian tradition and its origins in the antique folk balladry of the British Isles – and it is as magnificent as you would expect. Combining ancient modal drones, classical elegance and avant-garde subversion, the violins of David Harrington and John Sherba, Hank Dutt's viola and Sunny Yang's cello create a compelling sound-bed for four voices of contrasting character. Natalie Merchant hauntingly reworks ‘Johnny Has Gone for a Soldier’ from the American revolutionary war and ‘The Butcher's Boy’, while Rhiannon Giddens offers a spookily mournful take on the Irish ballad ‘Factory Girl’, which Sinéad O'Connor once sang with The Chieftains. Sam Amidon brilliantly captures the lonesome mountain sound on ‘Oh Where’ and Royal Academy of Music graduate Olivia Chaney delivers ‘Ramblin’ Boy’ with deathless beauty. Folk and classical traditions can seldom have come together so gloriously since Ralph Vaughan Williams's English Folk Song Suite almost a century ago.