Orkney Folk Festival has announced an international line-up for its 34th instalment, which takes place across the islands from May 26 to 29. Among those joining Chicago-based Irish-American fiddler Liz Carroll, Finland’s Frigg, Acadian trio Vishten and the north-east of England’s The Unthanks are Gaelic songstress Julie Fowlis, Live Act of the Year at the 2015 Scots Trad Music Awards, RURA, Scottish fiddle band Session A9, and recent visitors to Celtic Connections, Irish traditional quartet Lynched. Orkney’s own contributions to the folk circuit, singer-songwriter Ivan Drever, power duo Saltfishforty, fiddle and guitar-playing twins The Wrigley Sisters, and folk big band The Chair also appear.
orkneyfolkfestival.com
Michigan-based bluegrass-and-beyond group Lindsay Lou and the Flatbellys, pictured, have added a concert at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh on Monday, February 8 to their latest UK tour. The group, whose Ionia album – named after their hometown – earned enthusiastic reviews on both sides of the Atlantic last year, also appear at Aberdeen Music Hall on Saturday, February 13 in a double bill with Herald Angel-winning fiddler Duncan Chisholm. Their Traverse Theatre gig is part of the Music Mondays series coordinated throughout the year by Edinburgh’s Soundhouse organisation. lindsayloumusic.com
Drummer Ken Mathieson’s Classic Jazz Orchestra plays a series of concerts during February and March. The band, which specialises in jazz from the 1920s through to the early 1960s and has a particular interest in the music of Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong, appears at The Buccleuch Centre in Langholm on Friday, February 26; Edinburgh Jazz'n'Jive Club, Friday, March 11; Hospitalfield House, Arbroath, Saturday March 12; Paisley Arts Centre, Friday March 18; and Queens Cross Church, Aberdeen, Saturday, March 19.
classicjazzorchestra.org.uk
The annual Niel Gow Festival goes ahead in the great eighteenth century Perthshire fiddler-composer’s hometown of Birnam from March 18 to 20. Fiddle-cello duo Pete Clark & Ron Shaw, Session A9’s Caithness fiddler Gordon Gunn in a duo with keyboards player Brian McAlpine, and fiddlers Marie Fielding, Alistair Savage and recent BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year finalist Ryan Young are among those appearing, and as well as concerts there is a programme of workshops, walks and an open stage.
niel-gow.co.uk
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