THE centenary of The Great War has engendered artistic responses ranging from a North Yorkshire quilters and embroiderers' exhibition to the Touring Consortium Theatre's Regeneration tour and the National Youth Music Theatre's premiere of Benjamin Till's musical Brass.

One that came and went all too quickly was A Time And Place: Musical Meditations on the First World War, a response to the anniversary by folk luminaries Sam Lee and The Unthanks, a union of south and north restricted to only three concerts. Thankfully, the last of them was held in Yorkshire, adding to the poignancy of the Howard Assembly Room performance.

While Lee and North Eastern sisters Rachel and Becky Unthank were the poster faces, the key player was The Unthanks' arranger, Adrian McNally, whose "quite restrained and intimate" backing combined his piano with a string quartet and brass players on trumpet and euphonium. Multi-instrumentalist Nico Brown was an important contributor too, both instrumentally and in his collaborations with Lee on several songs such as Bideford Bridge.

A further dimension was the use of projections, mixed live as a sort of commentary that ran in tandem with the songs, provided by "video jockey" Matthew J Watkins, who has worked previously with Damon Albarn's Gorillaz, and here created visual effects that echoed the art of the Vorticists.

Songs ranged from the traditional to the rediscovered, the modern work of Tim Dalling and Jim Boyes to new pieces by Lee and the Unthanks, whose harmony singing was moving, beautiful, fatefully romantic and sombre, but peppered with occasional soldierly humour too.