📷 Photos by ABCassidy Photography Last month I attended my third North Atlantic Song Convention (NASC) – a formal title for what’s a lively and often informal gathering. The event has been running since 2020 and it’s a weekend packed with singers, songs and discussions about unaccompanied traditional singing. This year’s participants came from Scotland, … Continued

📷 Photo above by Cami Lemoine One of my favourite poets, Norman MacCaig, had a unique gift for noticing, capturing and celebrating the beauty of ordinary life. A tree or a frog or a coffee or a landscape or an overheard conversation are all subjects deserving of their own poem, a poem that doesn’t try … Continued

📷 Photo by Alan Donaldson The Button Boxes and Moothies Festival 2025 lit up Aberdeen this November with exactly the kind of warmth, music, and community spirit that makes traditional festivals so special. As someone now in my fourth year studying Performance in Traditional Music, specialising in the concertina, I’m used to lively sessions and … Continued

📷 Photo by Somhairle MacDonald Hi, I’m Kim Richards, and I live and work in the beautiful West Coast village of Ullapool. When people ask what I do, it takes me a moment to decide what to say and what role to prioritise as this changes regularly. In no particular order, I’m a secondary school … Continued

📷 Sheila Sapkota by Louis DeCarlo A rambling reflection on a success story which continues to move forward. I am a community musician and now, in my sixth decade of life, look back on the various musical meanderings I have encountered along the way. I have been so lucky to meet some amazing musicians and … Continued

I really love the strathspey, The Miller of Drone, and have been playing it a lot this past 6 months, getting to appreciate its personality and foibles. It is such a lyrical tune, and responds delightfully to either being driven hard, or gently coaxed. I got to wondering where the tune hailed from. Where is … Continued

📷 Photo by Peter McNally I first came across the incredible sound of Gaelic psalm singing back in 2002 when I was living in London and studying music at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). As part of my degree, I had the opportunity to do some work experience and spent a day … Continued

Picture this: it’s an hour before checkout in a Kyoto hotel. A kilted Scotsman approaches the reception desk, hoarse and probably still a little bit drunk. He croaks an almost silent “Sumimasen” to a bemused concierge. We’d been in Japan three days, and we’d already been on stage for ten of the last forty-eight hours. … Continued

📷 Photo above by Nicky Murray Let me tell you a little bit about Janey, the subject for the final track of this EP. Janey used to stick her head out of the car window in the backseat and sing at the top of her lungs into the wind, and the wind would wisp it … Continued

📷 Photos by Pip Graham-Bishop Twenty years ago this January, I stepped into a journey whose full scope I couldn’t then imagine. The seeds were sown earlier, but the story began in earnest in 2006 when a grant from the Arts Trust of Scotland made it possible for the late Nigel Richard to prototype a … Continued