Information for Kathryn Tickell & The Darkening at Oxford Playhouse, Oxford (Concert). 'The Darkening' is the Northumbrian name for twilight, but this band's music blazes fiercely... Musicians from Northumberland, Scotland, Ireland and England invoke the dark, powerful, sounds of Ancient Northumbria and broadcast them to the modern world. Their inspiration comes from the wild, dramatic, weather-bitten countryside along Hadrian's Wall, which seems so quintessentially Northumbrian... and yet, almost 2000 years ago, that same landscape was inhabited by people from around the world, worshipping different gods and following different customs.