Mike and Ali Vass
Item Posted: Monday 17th November , 2008
TWINS FOR LOCH GOIL CONCERT
Having had some of the top names in traditional music over the last few years, Lochgoilhead Fiddle Workshop are particularly pleased to put on a concert with Mike and Ali Vass (vocals, piano and fiddle) as their last concert of the year.
These young twins – only 21- have been playing together for over ten years. Hailing from Nairn in the North East of Scotland, Mike playing has long impressed judges and reviewers alike. Winner of two Mod gold medals, he has also been a finalist in the prestigious BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year 2005 award. Ali matched this achievement by being a finalist the following year, but she had already won ‘best instrumentalist’ competitions at the Inverness Music Festival and Strichen Folk Festival in her own right.
Mike and Ali have been invited to adjudicate at music competitions including the Keith Folk Festival and Mike regularly teaches fiddle throughout Scotland with the Feis movement. Aficionados of traditional music may well have caught their act as
they have been gigging regularly in Scotland for years, appearing at Celtic Connections, the Fringe, Eden Court Theatre Inverness, Bute Folk Festival, Albert Hall Stirling, The Tron Theatre Glasgow, Hootannany in Inverness among others.
As a duo they came to particular prominence, and the attention of the ‘main stream’ press, as finalists in the 2007 Hands Up for Trad Awards in the ‘Best Up and Coming Artists’ category. Rob Adams, in a Herald festival review, picked them out as a must see act: ‘Most invigorating was the sparkingly mobile pianism and fiddle fluency of Ali and Mike Vass…A raging torrent of strathspeys, jigs and reels, the youthful Nairn siblings play with great understanding, warmth and personality.’
Both siblings contribute ideas about what they are going to play. Mike finds most of the tunes, Ali, whose singing is gaining in confidence, most of the songs. Mike has also taken up the guitar, so Ali can concentrate on the singing without having to worry about accompaniment to the fiddle. As Mike says ‘ People like songs- it is easier to communicate through song, especially story songs.’
Playing a varied mix of traditional and contemporary tunes, songs with close vocal harmonies and footstompin’ jigs and reels this performance will be bursting with energy, drive and vitality. For an afternoon of song, piano and fiddle come to Lochgoilhead Village Hall on Sunday 16th November at 3.00 p.m. Reservations 01301 703504