Brilliant Music from Tyneside and beyond - enjoyed by HOWARD SMITH '... a rich cavalcade of internationally known and local singers ...'

Big River -- the Tyne -- is no Amazon, Ganges, Volga or Nile. Yet songs created and popularised within its watershed amount to an embarrassment of musical riches representative of Northumberland, Cumbria, County Durham, the North Pennines, Tyne and Wear and North Sea fisheries.

Big River is formed by the juncture of the North Tyne, rising on the Scottish border north of Kielder Water, and South Tyne, draining from Alston Moor, Cumbria, to the rivers' confluence near Hexham in Northumberland at a place dubbed 'The Meeting of the Waters'.

More famously that 'nickname' refers to the Avoca starting life as two rivers in County Wicklow, Ireland; the Avonmore (Abhainn Mhór, meaning 'Big River') and the Avonbeg (Abhainn Bheag, meaning 'Small River') joined together at a spot called the Meeting of the Waters (Cumar an dá Uisce), a local beauty spot, celebrated by Thomas Moore in his song of the same name...

UNITED KINGDOM

VOCAL MUSIC

FOLK MUSIC