BURGH HALL DUNOON 8th MAY 7.30 p.m.
Item Posted: Tuesday 20th April, 2010
It is a rare concert where top Scots and Gaelic singers join forces to bring the best of Celtic music to an audience. FiddleFolk, based in Lochgoilhead, has joined forces with the Burgh Hall to bring Emily Smith and Maggie McInnes to Dunoon.
Emily Smith and Jamie McClennan ( on guitar, fiddle and whistle) are fresh back from a mammoth ten week tour ‘down under’ and have now embarked on a lengthy tour of the UK taking in big venues in London and Aberdeen, and all points between, so Dunoon is fortunate to have been able to book her for this special combination night! Her tour is launching her most recent cd release 'Adoon Winding Nith', which has received already received excellent reviews, such as Mojo’s comment: ‘an affectionate, feel-good acoustic celebration.’
Emily sprung onto the national stage in 2002, winning the ‘BBC Young Traditional Musician of the Year Award’. Since then she has released four critically acclaimed albums, toured extensively with her band on the international folk circuit and is recognised not only as one of Scotland’s finest interpreters of traditional song but also as a talented songwriter and multi-instrumentalist.
After graduating with a degree in Scottish Music from The Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, Emily moved back to her home area of Dumfries & Galloway, and found her niche drawing on the rich local history and ever changing landscape as the source and inspiration for her music. She has affection (and a growing reputation) for collecting dusty old poetry and song books in search of new material. The results are re-worked ballads which seamlessly interweave with Smith’s own descriptive songs, often confusing the listener as to which material is old and which is new. Her song writing has not gone without recognition – she became the first ever winner from Scotland in the USA Songwriting Competition in 2005 after winning the folk section with her song ‘Edward of Morton’ Another of her songs ‘Always a Smile,’ about the life of her Polish grandmother, was short listed in the final ten.
Alongside her solo career Smith has written, recorded and toured with artists from the folk scene and beyond including Eddi Reader, Beth Nielsen Chapman, Karine Polwart, John McCusker, David Scott and Phil Cunningham. She has recorded live sessions for BBC Radio 2’s Bob Harris, Aled Jones and Mike Harding alongside receiving regular play on BBC Radio Scotland. Recent television work includes performing on BBC 1 Scotland’s Hogmanay show and she has featured in the new series of Transatlantic Sessions.
With the Guardian saying ‘Smith deserves to become yet another new folk celebrity’ and Mike Harding Radio 2 enthusing ‘as far as I’m concerned she can walk on water’ Emily Smith is clearly popular with critics as well as audiences.
In 2008 Emily Smith won the prestigious Scots Trad Music Award for ‘Scots Singer of the Year. In the same series of awards, but in 2004, Maggie MacInnes won the ‘Gaelic Singer of the Year’ category.
Maggie's repertoire comes largely from the songs she learned from her mother, the great Gaelic singer from the Isle of Barra, Flora MacNeil, who, of course, in turn had heard and learned the songs from her own mother, her extended family and from the island community in which she grew up.
Although largely drawn from the song traditions of that small archipelago at the southern tip of the Outer Hebrides, Maggie constantly turns-up surprises in her performances in the form of unfamiliar if not totally unique songs.
The breadth of the repertoire, although of great interest for those who love this tradition of song, is not the only element of the Gaelic tradition that Maggie has acquired, and in which she herself is now firmly placed. Maggie performs these great and rare songs with an emotion and an intimacy that surely can only come from her in-the-blood proximity to these songs in their original domestic rather than concert hall setting
Maggie, who also plays the clarsach, has performed in various groups over the years such as Ossian, Fuaim, Eclipse First. As The Maggie MacInnes Band she has travelled widely with her music touring in many parts of Europe, U.S.A. and Canada, and appears frequently on radio and television.
Since being given a Celtic Connections New Voices Commission which she entitled "Oran na Mna" (A Woman's Song), Maggie has gone on to compose lots of new music and song. She has written music for two BBC documentaries both produced by MNE Media. The first was called "An Traigh Mhor" and was all about the Airport on Barra which is a beautiful big sandy beach. The second was all about the island of Mingulay and was entitled "A Fàgail Mhiughalaidh". The music from the Celtic Connections commissioned piece and the Mingulay documentary can be heard on Maggie's last two CD releases.
She has recorded five solo CDs and continues to appear solo or with many of Scotland's top musicians. At this special one off concert she will perform with Brian McAlpine (keyboards and accordion) and Anna Massie, who won, in her own right, BBC Radio Scotland’s Young Traditional Musician of the Year award in 2003, on guitar and fiddle. ‘The trio of Maggie singing and playing clarsach, Brian MacAlpine on keyboards and accordion and Anna Massie on guitar…generate a subtle yet emphatic pallet of accompaniment, at times sparse, at others gently swinging with lilting syncopations, and then with rapid-fire reeling.’
An evening of Scots and Gaelic Song is on at Burgh Hall, Dunoon on Saturday 8th May at 7.30 p.m. More information at www.fiddlefolk.co.uk. Tickets £12 (Concessions £10, Schoolchildren FREE) from 01301 703504