BRITISH folk institution Richard Thompson will play in York for the first time since June 2000 this spring.

He will visit the Grand Opera House on May 27 as part of a 14-date solo tour, on which he will be supported by Jim Moray, winner of the Album of the Year prize and the Horizon Award at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards last month.

Thompson will open his itinerary on May 15 at the Hackney Empire Theatre in London and will be sure to air songs from his latest album, The Old Kit Bag.

The album was released in February 2003, since when he has toured with a full band, played major festivals last summer and rounded off a successful year with two sold-out shows at Sadler's Wells Theatre in London, where he presented the innovative 1,000 Years Of Popular Music.

The Old Kit Bag is his 25th album, or his 31st if you include the six he made as a member of folk-rock innovators Fairport Convention. Recorded in spare trio format with minimal overdubs, the record is a textbook lesson on how to convey layers of meaning with minimal gestures.

Kit Bag opens like a pocketbook filled with gems: images of innocence lost among tombstones on Gethsemane; of distant love remembered on A Love You Can't Survive; and of demons unleashed by ignorance on Outside Of The Inside.

When asked if a central theme ties them all together, Thompson seems nonplussed. "Um... no," he says. "I suppose the title is a theme of sorts. It's a reference to the old First World War song, Pack Up Your Troubles In Your Old Kit Bag, which is about smiling and whistling a happy tune as the Germans rain shells down on you."

There is a musical continuity to Kit Bag, in the eloquent interplay between Thompson's vocals and string parts, the acoustic bass lines of Danny Thompson and the drumming of Michael Jerome. "The idea was to keep it small," Thompson says. "I did do a few overdubs - second guitar, dulcimer, single-finger keyboard parts, all the easy stuff - but other than that, everything was pretty much a live performance."

Thompson's musical mission began with his jamming with Jimi Hendrix in his teens, then joining Fairport Convention at the age of 17, and he is held in such high regard by fellow musicians that he has been the subject of a tribute album, Beat The Retreat.

On that record, his songs were covered by the diverse likes of REM, Los Lobos, Bob Mould, the Five Blind Boys of Alabama and John Mellencamp, who commented: "Richard Thompson could say more in one line than I could in a whole song."

With Kit Bag, Thompson reasserts his standing once more as a major figure in British music. "The major labels have been concentrating almost exclusively on Top 40, but now they're in crisis," he muses. "The industry is changing. Different strata are appearing. Slowly but surely, audiences will find it easier to find the music they really want to hear."

The chance to do that in York will come at Thompson's 7.30pm show on May 27. For tickets (£18.50), ring 0870 606 3595.

Updated: 15:27 Thursday, March 11, 2004