The House Full' sign went up early on Friday evening, where there was a touch of poignancy in the air.

This was because the New Rope String Band, inherits a reputation left by Joe Scurfield, the brilliant force at the heart of the trio that was the Old Rope String Band, who died last year.

Now these welcoming surroundings hosted the Wharfedale debut of the new line-up. To everyone's delight - and some understandable relief - the new band has very much more in common with the old than just a name and the continued presence of Pete Challoner and Tim Dalling.

A skillfully preposterous blend of musical recital and circus steadily engulfed the audience and showed what has been built up over 20 years work in many countries. As the players introduced themselves, with newcomers Jock Tyldesley and Vera van Heeringen made known to many for the first time, a series of bizarre routines got under way. Before long, music gave way to tennis as an escaped note was knocked back and forth using fiddles as racquets.

Overall there was rather a lot of fiddling, an impressive amount of accordionising, a good deal of guitar-wielding, a noticeable presence of banjos, an assertive contribution of mandolin, an unforgettable trumpet, plenty of singing, ceaseless action - and more plastic tubes than you could easily count.

For those given to more conventional learning, there was brief change of scenery, to a backdrop showing a stave of music with holes through which the Ropeans sung chord-forming notes, achieving harmony despite much clambering, scampering and slapping.

Slapping also had a significant part in a gymnastic folk dance for three, all to a relentless fiddle accompaniment smilingly provided by Vera.

A tender piece of Hebridean music was thoroughly embellished from above by Tyldesley, as he produced a foghorn from a conch-shell, mewing gulls from his fiddle strings, and plopping annoyance upon his three fellow players, before assuming the guise of a creature half-human half-seal and wholly worthy of island folklore.

How little these descriptions tell of the high standard of multi-instrumental musicianship without which the japes would have no structure. but it was evident that those who thought they'd come mainly for the fun found themselves caught up in the music; and those who came mainly for the music yielded willingly to the frolics.

The band's qualities gathered in an elegiac encore, when the New Orleans-style marching trumpet and banjo duo of Dalling and Jock entered the hall from behind the audience and moved through to the stage. Once there, Tim sang lyrics that touched every heart- only to be joined by the two manic blonde groovers Challoner and van Heeringen who used multiple bulb-horns to honk their part of a frantically merry finale. It summed up The New Rope String Band pretty well.