Celtic Connections

Young Traditional Musician of the Year

City Halls, Glasgow

Rob Adams

four stars

FIDDLER Charlie Stewart became the seventeenth winner of Hands up for Trad’s Young Traditional Musician of the Year title on Sunday in a strongly contested final.

Stewart, from Glenfarg in Perthshire, played a beautifully paced slot that showcased his individuality, marvellous tone, a wonderful range of attack and expression and all-round musicality.

His final set, including Phil Cunningham’s reel The Girls at Martinfield, illustrated Stewart’s ability to create excitement without racing and his own air, Onions, despite its apparently haphazardly chosen title, was played with superb sensitivity and a lovely coda of harmonics and blue notes.

What came across particularly, however, was the sense of someone who had absorbed the tradition and was in the process of taking it forward. Where he takes it from here, as he also studies double bass on the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland’s jazz course, will be interesting indeed.

All six finalists acquitted themselves very well and served up a concert that was full of variety and differing personalities. Gaelic singer Kim Carnie quickly established a natural rapport with the audience and sang both nimbly and movingly.

Ella Munro’s bright demeanour came over clearly as she sang with humour and strong choruses, and Iona Fyfe’s Doric singing matched traditional character with musical development and an easy populism in her singing of Violet Jabob’s Baltic Street.

There was no shortage of stagecraft in the other two instrumental presentations as accordionist Grant McFarlane entertained with confident playing across the tempo spectrum and a surprise gift of pink wigs, and Dougie McCance rocked the house with accomplished piping and a great understanding with percussionist Iain Sandilands.