Clementine Ward, Romance For Aeola Or Violin - music published in Concertina World 459, September 2014. Recorded 15th September, 2014

Pauline de Snoo, concertina & Chris van de Kuilen, piano

The Derwent Trio were Herbert Hague, Wilfred Pearce and Reuben Shaw, who were all early members of the ICA. This recording is from the mid 1970s

Derwent Trio - New Colonial March

Tom Prince was a blacksmith by trade and one of the finest English Concertina players of his day. Tom was active in the ICA, joining in 1954 shortly after the Association was founded. A winner of numerous ICA festivals and competitions, Tom's taste in music was broad and as well as a fine player of classical music, he was a long-time member of the Benfieldside Morris. The English Folk Dance and Song Society, celebrated Tom's musicianship in a film. This amateur recording of one of Tom's concerts comes from the Reuben Shaw collection donated to the ICA. The image was sourced from a posting on www.concertina.net

Tom Prince - Souvenir de Cirque Renz

Alexander Prince was born Alexander Sutherland in Aberdeen in around 1870. Prince played 51 and 71 key McCann Duet concertinas. In demand as a performer, Prince toured extensively, travelling as far as South Africa. He made a large number of recordings and this one was orginally digitized  and reproduced on cassette and reel to reel tapes by Neovox of Birmingham in the 1970s. Eventually settling in Nottingham, Prince taught and self published several elementary pieces for Duet concertina from his home in Glebe Street. These are available to ICA members by emailing librarian@concertina.org (thanks to Wes Williams for biographical information sourced from www.concertina.net)

Alexander Prince - Colonel Bogey March (1917)

Tony Crehan (1942-1995) was the son of Martin (Junior) Crehan from Clare, who was one of the older icons of Irish Traditional Music. Tony started on button accordion, and then moved on to concertina, subsequently doing a lot to promote concertina playing in Ireland. Together with his good friend and player Larry Kinsella, Tony ran classes for the youngsters in Wexford.  This splendid recording illustrating Tony’s relaxed and fluid playing style was made by ICA Committee member Wes Williams in the summer of 1989 in Clare. It isn’t a public performance as such, just Tony playing for a few people in a room. The picture, taken in 1981, is credited to Henrik Muller who posted this on www.concertina.net

Tony Crehan (1989)

Ashton under Lyne concertina band were one of a possible 200 concertina bands in England in the late 19th and early 20th century. In Stuart Eydmann's thesis, "The Life and Times of the Concertina", there is a description by James Ash, a member of the band in the 1920's, of the extensive touring that the band would do in the Summer months. http://www.concertina.com/eydmann/life-and-times/eydmann-life-and-times-chap-08.pdf. This recording comes from the collection of Wes Williams and the picture was sourced from the concertina museum web site, created by Neil Wayne. www.concertinamuseum.com


Ashton under Lyne Concertina Band - Glow-Worm Idyll

Many thanks to Dick Miles for his permission to share this recording and for the following words: "Concertina Bands were popular in the period 1900 to 1914, especially in the North of England, where they developed alongside brass bands in these areas. As a result of the two world wars and the decimation of the male population, their popularity declined. While many concertina bands disappeared, the Mexborough Concertina Prize band struggled on until 1978. The music and instruments had, however, been lovingly cared for and in 1983 were bought by Nigel Pickles. As part of the original band's concert programme four of the solo players would play a selection of quartets in between the full band numbers.Dick contacted Nigel and suggested playing the quartets live, thus in 1984 the NMECQ was formed. The original members were Dick Miles, Rob Mckie, Steve Dickinson and Nigel Pickles; this line up continued for 3 years. After Dick Miles moved to Nottingham, the quartet continued for six to nine months with Douglas Rogers as a replacement. The original quartet made two recordings of which only one was issued commercially [plant life 071]."

The New Mexborough English Concertina Quartet - The Liberty Bell

Hello, these pages host some of the music archive of the International Concertina Association, which was founded in 1952. The ICA exists to promote and preserve the playing of the concertina and we have members all over the world. If you have any special recordings that you would like to share, please feel free to get in touch. 


ICA Concertina Recordings

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