This year's Shetland Schools Music Festival, funded by the Scottish Arts Council Youth Music Initiative, is set to take place from the 8th to 12th March, and will again feature a packed programme of adjudicated music classes, performances, workshops and concerts, together with the Junior and Senior Young Musicians of the Year competition, throughout its five day run.
Update - Singing Kettle tickets sold out within 90 minutes!
Media release - Shetland Folk Festival latest line up
This year's Shetland Folk Festival, celebrating its 30th Anniversary, sees yet another eclectic and innovative line up of visiting artistes comprised of both first timers and festival favourites from the years gone by.
Drummer Alyn Cosker and his jazz funk quartet will visit Shetland in the first weekend of February to play two concerts (Lerwick Town Hall on Fri 5th and Bigton Hall on Sat 6th) and hold educational workshops as part of their national tour.
A multi-faceted, all encompassing drummer with blistering technique and a sympathetic ear to all genres, Cosker "has emerged as the top young drummer on the Scottish jazz scene, handsomely fulfilling the promise he showed as a teenager in the Strathclyde Youth Jazz Orchestra." (The List)
On Saturday 23rd January at 21:30 Radio 3 are to re-broadcast Jessica Isaac's programme made in Fair Isle in May 2009 inspired by the song "Empty Ocean" by Fair Isle singer Lise Sinclair which she recorded with composer Damian Montagu from London. The song is based on a poem by Shetland's Paulo Dante, "The Halibut Fisher's Saturday Night". The song has been described as a "sonic journey" exploring fishing traditions past and present and the island's continued worry about the changes in fish stocks and seabird populations:
Two years ago Shetland fiddle maker Ewan Thomson was commissioned by the National Museum of Scotland to make an instrument to be included in a display celebrating Scotland's musical heritage. At a ceremony today (14/1/10) the finished fiddle was showcased by some of Shetland's finest young players at a concert at the Lerwick Museum.
Rock fans in Shetland are in for a treat in March when one of Scotland's best loved rock bands head north to start their UK tour in the isles. Gun will play the Burra Public Hall on Friday 5th March as the first show of their Popkiller 2010 tour.
Media Release: This year's Shetland Folk Festival (29 April to 2 May 2010), celebrating its 30th Anniversary, sees yet another eclectic and innovative line up of visiting artistes comprised of both first timers and festival favourites from the years gone by.
Within weeks of their triumph at the Scottish Trad Awards where they won "Album of the Year", Fiddlers' Bid have had their album "All Dressed in Yellow" nominated for another prize.