Maddy Prior with Hannah James & Giles Lewin
Album: 3 For Joy
Label: Park
Tracks: 14
Website: http://www.parkrecords.com

To date, Maddy's always majored on continuing to further her practical experience of traditional music of disparate origins, invariably in fresh and interesting ways - whether in a solo capacity, or with Steeleye Span or The Carnival Band, or in consort with other musicians.

For her latest project, Maddy has brought her long-time collaborator, fiddle player Giles Lewin (of Carnival Band and Bellowhead fame, who also plays bagpipes and recorder here) into happy conjunction with youthful accordionist (and clog dancer) Hannah James (of Lady Maisery and James & Sweeney). It happens that both of these musicians are also accomplished singers, whose voices blend superbly with Maddy's in wonderful clarity and harmony, as their fine a cappella trio rendition of the Border song Dacre (in Rose Kemp's keen arrangement) exemplifies. Happily, there's plenty more delicious a cappella throughout this disc, with The Brisk Young Widow, Doffin Mistress, Thomas Ravenscroft's nursery rhyme Of All The Birds (which Maddy first tackled with Tim Hart on their landmark Summer Solstice album) and the spirited Appalachian traditional Factory Girl all forming a secular contrast to the Sacred Harp hymn Wondrous Love and the Georgian song Naninei.

Those purely unaccompanied vocal tracks are creatively interspersed with items that conjure gorgeously rich textures from just two or three instrumental lines; best of these are probably The Serving Girl's Holiday, set by Maddy to the melody of the 12th century partsong Orientis Partibus, and the opening James Hogg lyric Lock The Door Larriston. Geographically speaking, the disc starts and finishes in the Borders, closing on a magisterial multi-piped rendition of Oh My Nanny, a tune from the Thomas Berwick collection. The central portion of the disc then makes for a captivating sequence that transports us out of England and into the far reaches of eastern Europe, with a succinct composition by Veselin Dobrovski (Nauchila) effortlessly upstaged by An Undoing World (which Maddy sourced from The Klezmatics), an intense song which addresses ethnic cleansing. There's also an exciting non-vocal interlude in the form of a Slovenian horo.

This is a simply yet intelligently managed record that provides a high degree of musical satisfaction, and represents another fruitful chapter in Maddy's ongoing artistic exploration of the world's folk traditions.

David Kidman