How Cool Is That Zither ?

This is quite a special album by Andrew Cronshaw called Ochre. I guess it would be pigeon holed in the world music slot. Certainly the instrumentation would lead to that; Cronshaw principally plays zither but also fujara, ba-wu, gu-cheng, whistle, overtone whistle, dizi and quenacho ( I have no idea what most of those are but apart from the whistles they sound like various plucked instruments with an oriental tinge ). Abdullah Chhadeh plays oud and qanun, Ian Blake bass clarinet, soprano sax, clarinet and prepared piano, Bernard O'Neill double bass, Llio Rhydderch triple harp and Matthaios Tsahourides Pontic lyra. Natasha Atlas sings on two tracks ( I think in Turkish, certainly not in English ). The concept of the album is to base each track on an old collected English ballad tune and extrapolate from there. The improvisations from this base lead into oriental and more often eastern European or middle eastern musical territories with the belief that although there is something distinctively English about the tunes, the lyrics often didn't originate in England and they express universals that can transcend boundaries , language and cultural frameworks. Listened to casually, you might not even realise the connection to the English ballads but the knowledge of that adds to appreciation as the disk unwinds. The playing of the musicians is virtuosic and it is beautifully recorded.