Inverness last night hosted the glittering highlight of the folk calendar - "glittering" and "folk" being on friendlier conceptual terms than once they were - as the trophies were handed out at the 12th Scots Trad Music Awards.

Known as "the office party", it is actually not a million miles from the workplace-based festivity: a gathering of different specialisms and generations who don't usually party together.

Winners ranging from Brave soundtrack star Julie Fowlis to West Lothian Schools Pipe Band illustrated the broad-church embrace of the awards' 18 main categories, which included accolades for tutors and community projects as well as headline gongs like Album, Live Act and Band Of The Year.

While the event's prime mover, Simon Thoumire of Hands Up For Trad development agency, is always frank about its publicity-generating purpose, he is also assiduous about sharing the spotlight with unsung sub-sectors such as folk clubs, dance bands and venues. This year's winners in these three categories were The Tin Hut Sessions in rural Aberdeenshire, Shetland veterans Da Fustra and Ullapool's much-loved Ceilidh Place. The winners are decided by online vote, with a record electorate this year numbering more than 100,000.

A lavishly diverse parade of live entertainment was laid on between the opening of those all-important envelopes, including evergreen "acid croft" pioneers Shooglenifty, Shetland's barnstorming Fiddlers' Bid, Gaelic outfit Na h-Oganaich and singer Robyn Stapleton, the reigning Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician Of The Year.

There was plenty of glitter adorning ladies' outfits and scores of best kilts on display, underlining the Trads' renown as the only time you see the folk community thoroughly scrubbed up.

While those shortlisted for Folk Band Of The Year included, perhaps oddly, two singers' backing line-ups, with Fowlis's band clinching the title, the competition in many categories was exceptionally strong, sweetening the spoils further for Highland fiddler Duncan Chisholm, the Album Of The Year winner for his Live At Celtic Connections release; Composer Of The Year Jim Sutherland, co-creator of Struileag - Children of the Smoke; and harp-wielding Instrumentalist Of The Year, Catriona McKay.

Borders-born Emily Smith and young Lewis native Mischa Macpherson were named, respectively, Scots and Gaelic Singer Of The Year, while Event Of The Year was the multi-disciplinary theatre production Grit: The Martyn Bennett Story, which celebrates the work of the late lamented multi-instrumentalist and composer (featured in our Magazine today).

The annual litany of absent friends who have departed in the past 12 months tempered the merriment with commemoration, including the sad addition of the great Traveller tradition-bearer Sheila Stewart - a featured voice on Bennett's original album Grit - who died last week. Bennett's mother, singer Margaret Bennett, was among this year's 11 inductees into the Scots Trad Music Hall Of Fame, which also included pianist/composer Andy Thorburn, Glasgow's The Clutha and the much-missed Davy Steele and Danny Kyle. With the death in January of Davie Henderson, a longtime linchpin of Shetland Folk Festival, his son Kevin, of Fiddlers' Bid, collected on his behalf the Hamish Henderson Award for Services to Traditional Music.

Inverness Leisure Centre saw another record broken by the sellout crowd of more than 1000, with plenty more at home watching BBC Alba's live broadcast, once again expertly MC-ed by Tony Kearney and Mary Ann Kennedy.