Grassroots community musicmaking, combined with a rootedness in traditional Scottish music has been a great recipe for a vibrant and resilient community fiddle project aka ‘Fun Fiddle’, based in an East Edinburgh community centre, formerly a ‘Steamie’ – now The Wash House. Here Gica reflects on her twenty three years with the project.

Stepping down from running Fun Fiddle feels momentous, considering about a third of my life has been so intertwined with the project. It’s a new and unfamiliar space to be in – my first Autumn not booking venues, answering enquiries, curating classes, planning the next community performance platform, sending out mailchimps, and updating the website and so on. It’s a space to begin to absorb what it’s meant in my and others lives and I feel quietly proud, and happy that I am leaving it in a good place and moving aside for others to lead onwards in new directions, including the fiddle learners themselves who are the bedrock of the Fun Fiddle community.

📷 Gica Loening

Founded by Jenny Gardner, Fun Fiddle started in 2003 as a small informal group of adult learners in the basement of St John’s Church. When I joined in 2004, we expanded the number of fiddle classes on offer, and began to take in children too, basing ourselves in another local church hall.

With 8 years behind me as the Adult Learning Project’s Scots Music Group development worker and fiddle tutor, combined with a background in community development and health projects, I was keen to build a similar project on my local patch in East Edinburgh. I was and remain very much inspired by ALP’s ethos of accessibility, equality, and building community through shared learning and opportunities to perform for others no matter what your ability.

Jenny and I had many happy years of working together and establishing the Fun Fiddle community. In those pre-digital times (hard to recall!), we recorded and disseminated bespoke CDs for each class, with the whole term’s repertoire and each tune played slowly and then up to speed. We created Fun Fiddle tune books (now to be found online on the website), and we cut out tickets by hand, to sell in the local cake shop for the next Fun Fiddle ceilidh!

Fun Fiddle grew over the years in an organic way, with hundreds of players of all ages taking part. Alongside weekly classes, self led groups, and one to one lessons, building confidence in performing to others has always been a part of the mix, from beginners to advanced. This has involved in-house stramashes, family ceilidhs, local busks, and larger collaborations with street bands, choirs, and drummers. Portobello Promenade was the ideal platform for the famous Fun Fiddle Parade, ending at ‘the cake’ bandstand with an outdoor ceilidh.

📷 Fun Fiddle Parade

A highlight for Fun Fiddle was our youth collaboration with Porty High School kids, playing together as a big band for 2023 Scots Fiddle Festival.

The annual family ceilidh at The Wash House, features possibly the largest ceilidh band in existence, with approximately 60 fiddlers ranging in age from 5 – 85 playing together, the principle being to play the tunes you know, and then join in the dancing!

📷 Fun Fiddle Ceilidh

Playing on the stage has been such a boost for Fun Fiddlers, with simple open string parts for beginners and the tunes carried by the more advanced. A shared repertoire has very much been the key to keeping everyone on board.

A cultural exchange with Syrian refugees, newly arrived in Edinburgh, in the form of monthly ceilidhs contributed to the sense of our city being a welcoming one, with musicmaking definitely the glue for friendship and exchange across cultures. We shared Scottish tunes and dances and in turn learned Arabic dabkas and ate food together.

📷 Cultural Exchange Ceilidh

During the pandemic, Fun Fiddle played a significant local role, performing outdoors for schoolchildren and neighbours. Serenading the children on their first day back at school after covid lockdown was a moving moment for families returning after so long:

“What a wonderful way to welcome the children back to school. I’m greetin!”

“It was amazing. My nursery and p2 child were skipping and singing ‘Mhairi’s wedding’ all the way to school after hearing it! Thank you to all. 🌈💞🤩👏”

📷 Fun Fiddle Youngsters

Amongst many highlights, being nominated for ‘Community Project of the Year’ for the Scots Trad Awards 2017 brought the national spotlight onto Fun Fiddle which was an exciting buzz.

Over the years we’ve had great input from guest musicians such as Aidan O’Rourke, Liz Doherty, Fin Moore, and Mairi Campbell, as well as longer term skilled tutors such as – Ros Gasson, Rona Wilkie, Marit Falt, and last, but not least Sarah Hoy, who I’m delighted to say is now running Fun Fiddle. She is joined by Lori Watson, and I couldn’t have dreamt of a better pair to lead Fun Fiddle onwards!

Connection, friendship, and a sense of being on a shared journey, has seen Fun Fiddlers through both tough and joyous times, sharing the highs and lows of learning this (let’s face it) ‘challenging’ instrument! We’ve seen through a whole generation of youngsters, and several adults have been with the project from the start. Many have articulated how important Fun Fiddle has been for them in life changing ways:

“I had never played till I was nearly 50 and first attended Fun Fiddle when it started! I think it’s been wonderful; fantastic teaching in groups and playing with others. I have made lots of lovely friendships and have, and continue to have, great fun playing with everyone! We are so lucky to have fun fiddle on our doorstep!”

“I started Fun Fiddle five years ago and that was after my fiddle lay dormant in an attic for half a century! Just can’t believe how soon I was able to join in with tunes. I was encouraged to play in my first ceilidh, well armed with a couple of tunes and lots of open strings. I have learnt so much since my first days at Fun Fiddle because of amazingly talented teachers and being in a group of the loveliest, most welcoming fellow fiddlers, young and older! It’s amazing at how quickly you learn but most of by all the fun we have and all the friendships made!”

“It’s great to have the opportunity to play with a group of enthusiastic musicians lead by outstanding teachers. I especially enjoy playing at local events and watching everyone dancing to our music. It’s also fantastic therapy: I feel as high as a kite after each session.”

“What I have loved over the last year has been playing with other people on a Thursday evening. As well as practicing this offers opportunities for listening to each other and I think improves how we play together!”

📷 Fun Fiddle Adult Group Sharing a Tune

So where do I stand after 23 years of my journey with Fun Fiddle? I’m both proud of what has been achieved and also aware of directions the project could still go in, include securing funding for free instruments and tuition, allowing access for kids and adults who may not have had such an opportunity.

Deciding when to leave a project, especially one that has been your baby, can be a big decision, and it certainly took me a couple of years to decide. However I do so in the knowledge that the time is right for others to step in and bring new inspiration and skills to Fun Fiddle. In addition the core group of fiddlers over the years have built a strong sense of ownership and I feel Fun Fiddle is safe in their hands.

I’m delighted that Sarah Hoy together with her husband Fin Moore, have brought their Far North project southwards to collaborate for a 2nd annual weekend of musicmaking with Fun Fiddle, and as I write, a new cohort of very young fiddle players are starting up, taught by Lori Watson. I feel huge pride seeing our teenage players heading out into the world with their fiddles on their backs and I love hearing the self led adult fiddle group playing together, sharing tunes, and working things out for themselves.

Fun Fiddlers wrote a brilliant farewell song for me, astutely referring to my “retiring” in inverted commas. So true! It’s a shift rather than retiring – a concept I sometimes find problematic. Now I have more space for continued teaching of young fiddlers, klezmer fiddle workshops, musical collaborations, and other adventures ahead.

I’ll finish here on a few words from Sarah Hoy –

‘I have loved the last few years of teaching and getting to know all at Fun Fiddle and I am really excited to have the opportunity to take hold of the reigns! Along with Jenny at the start, Gica has built such an amazing community and it is an honour to take that forward. I look forward to seeing what adventures lie ahead for us all at Fun Fiddle!’

The latest Fun Fiddle Ceilidh event in March 2026

Fun Fiddle with Brass Blast (Oi Musica) on Portobello Promenade 2018

www.funfiddle.co.uk | Find us on Facebook

Gica Loening is a fiddle teacher, early years community music practitioner, community activist, TRACS mentor, grandmother, gardener, and working her way towards retirement!

📷 Gica’s Farewell Do

The first time Roo Geddes encountered the Lindsay System chanter, it was difficult to miss.

“I vividly remember the first rehearsal where you produced those absolutely brightly coloured rainbow pipes,” Roo recalls. “I thought, ‘Oh God, what have I got myself into here?’”

This was around twelve years ago, at a rehearsal for a fundraising concert at St Mary’s Cathedral in Glasgow. Roo was still in his teens. We played “Lowlands”, the old song recorded by Anne Briggs, and some instrumental music. It was the beginning of a musical relationship that has continued, intermittently but steadily, ever since.

The pipes were an early red-and-yellow prototype of the extended-range Scottish smallpipe chanter I had begun developing through 3D printing. The colours were partly practical: after producing a succession of black prototypes, I needed some way of remembering which version was which. But there was a degree of showmanship involved too. The rainbow set announced itself before a note had been played.

Roo’s initial alarm did not last.

“Quite quickly, I got captured by the extended range,” he says. “I remember finding the pipe scale within my fingers—not just in the initial octave, but also in the new range that this system has.”

At that stage Roo had not played extensively with pipers. He spent time slowly exploring the scale on the fiddle, learning how the pitches sat against the drones and locating those intervals in his own hands and ears. That work became the foundation of a particular shared sound.

Listeners may not know why the fiddle, piano and pipes sometimes appear to flow into one another on Honeymoon Bridge, but they will hear it. Scottish smallpipes do not necessarily inhabit the same equal-tempered tuning system as a modern piano. Their scale is shaped by the continuous presence of the drones. Roo has learned to play into that sound: not merely alongside the chanter, but inside its intonation.

The piano presented a different challenge. For “Drunk at Night, Dry in the Morning”, Roo and Watercolour Music’s Nick Turner retuned the studio piano to meet the pipes. Nick raised an eyebrow when we asked if we might put his piano “out of tune”, then revealed that he knew exactly how to do it. The result is not an audible technical exercise. It simply feels settled: piano, chanter and drones sharing the same ground.

Roo and I had played together sporadically for a decade before finally recording a full album. In December 2024 he contributed fiddle and piano throughout my solo debut, Two Boats Under the Moon. That album was principally a collection of songs, with the guitar often providing the harmonic and rhythmic framework. The pipes appeared across it, but as one element within a larger sound.

When we returned to Watercolour Music in April 2026, the balance changed. On Honeymoon Bridge, the pipes move decisively into the foreground. In many arrangements they occupy the structural position that the guitar had held on the earlier record. The result is both a companion to Two Boats Under the Moon and a substantially different kind of album.

Roo brought his great-great-grandfather’s violin to both sessions. A surviving ticket records that instrument being played at the Kelvingrove Bandstand in 1904. It also formed the central voice of Roo’s own debut album, Close, recorded with his gran, aunt and mother and built partly from music transmitted through his Glasgow family.

That fiddle now meets an instrument whose recorded tradition is only just beginning.

For a listener accustomed to ordinary Scottish smallpipes, the most immediately unfamiliar feature of the Lindsay System is its range. In the middle register it retains the warm, buzzy voice of the smallpipes. Below the traditional scale, the sound becomes thicker, warmer and more bass-like. At the top, it passes into what I think of as a sweet falsetto. Together, those registers take the chanter across approximately two and a half octaves.

But range on paper means very little. The real question has always been what sort of music those notes can carry.

Honeymoon Bridge begins to answer that through repertoire rather than demonstration. New tunes sit beside old Scottish and Irish material, songs and melodies drawn from printed collections, recordings and oral transmission. Tunes that helped define the chanter’s early repertoire now sit inside complete musical sets, formed through the long process of playing, arranging and listening that any instrument requires.

“There’s a lot in this record,” Roo says. “It’s quite hard to pin it down. There’s music that’s pretty brand new—our own tunes—but there’s also some very, very old material and traditional material. I think it showcases the really immense capacity of this brand-new instrument.”

That mixture matters. I did not develop the chanter in order to produce a technical display-piece, or to replace the existing smallpipe chanter. Its musical identity has emerged through its contact with traditional repertoire: through asking which old tunes open naturally into the lower register, where a melody wishes to rise beyond the old nine-note compass, and what becomes possible when an accompanying musician can answer the pipes across a wider field.

The process has also moved beyond me. The downloadable LSC_PRINT&PLAY chanter has been taken up internationally, while players including Malin Lewis, Cameron Stahl and, more recently, Flynn Butler Fraser have begun finding their own music on the system. Each player’s use of it is necessarily different. That is one of the consequences—and purposes—of making the design openly available.

This summer, the Dreaming Pipes exhibition has been telling the instrument’s twenty-year development story in Stornoway, Oban and now Dundee. The exhibition contains drawings, instruments, prototypes, photographs and the work of people who have carried the system in directions I could not have planned alone. It looks backwards far enough to make visible the sustained labour behind the instrument, but its real subject is the point we have now reached.

Honeymoon Bridge is the musical counterpart to that exhibition. The exhibition describes how the instrument came into being; the album lets it get on with the business of being an instrument.

I think of the record as one proposal for its natural home: an opening body of repertoire, rather than a definitive statement. Roo goes further.

“It feels like a landmark,” he says. “It feels like the beginning of an odyssey. With the release of this record, it feels like the beginning of a much longer journey—like it’s embarking on a big adventure, and we got to be the initial launch point.”

After twelve years, that seems exactly right. We did not rush towards the album. We allowed the instrument, the repertoire and our own musical relationship time to develop. Honeymoon Bridge records the point at which those paths met.

~~~~~~~~~~

Honeymoon Bridge releases on Tuesday 15 September 2026.
Pre-orders available from Bandcamp.

📷 Photo by Nicky Murray

A few years have passed since the release of my debut EP, In My Mind. In that time, I have had the opportunity to perform, tour and develop a greater sense confidence in my own sound. It felt like the right moment to take the next step and create my first full length album.

Mo Thìr | My Land is a collection of songs that have shaped me as a singer and through the process of making the album connected me even more deeply with my native home of Islay.

The Inspiration

This album is inspired by Islay, my musical journey so far, and the people and stories that have shaped me. I feel incredibly lucky to have grown up in such a beautiful place with such a strong cultural identity. As a Gaelic singer, Islay has always been at the centre of my art, and I knew that it would play a prominent role in this recording.

Most of the songs on the album are either from Islay or have a strong connection to the island. Alongside these traditional songs are two pieces that I composed myself, as well as a couple of songs that have become connected to particular moments in my life over the past few years.

Since leaving Islay, I think I have become even more conscious of how important the island is to my sense of identity. Being away from home has made me reflect more deeply on the place I grew up, the language I heard around me and the songs and stories that were passed down through the community. In many ways, making this album has been a way of returning home – not physically, but through music.

The Songs

The songs on the album came to me in a number of different ways. Some of the traditional Islay songs are ones I grew up hearing and singing, passed on to me by people within the local community. Others I learned during my time at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, where I focused my final year of study on the songs of Islay and the island’s Gaelic dialect.

I wanted the album to reflect that mixture of personal experience, community tradition and my own development as a singer. Songs that I have carried with me since childhood feature alongside songs that I have discovered and explored more recently. There are also two original pieces on the album, Èirinn and Starlings, both of which are deeply rooted in my own connection to Islay and its people.

Èirinn was born from the words of Islay bard William Livingston (1808–1870). Livingston was a strong nationalist and his writing was often political, advocating strongly for the Gaelic language. He also had a great empathy for the Irish people, something which is particularly evident in this piece. His words recall stories he had heard of heroic Irish Gaels and question where such figures were during the devastating famine. I felt a very personal connection to Livingston too as he lived in the same house where my granny grew up. I took his words and created a melody for them, hoping to reflect the heartbreak, frustration and empathy contained within his writing.

Starlings, meanwhile, is a song I wrote for my granny and grandpa, who are sadly no longer with us. It tells of their own love story. When my granny left Islay for a period to work on the mainland as a nanny, the two of them promised to write to each other. As time passed no letters were received and they both assumed that their relationship had been lost. When my granny eventually returned home to Islay, they discovered that my grandpa’s mother had been destroying the letters written between them. They rekindled their love and went on to have a happy life together. My grandparents were such a prominent part of my childhood on Islay and writing Starlings became a way of preserving a small part of their story and my memories of them.

Throughout the album there are recurring themes of love, loss, emigration and belonging. Stories of sailors lost at sea, lovers separated by distance and people forced to leave their homes. Although many of these songs come from a different time, the emotions and experiences within them remain deeply familiar today.

Bringing the Songs to Life

I feel incredibly lucky to regularly perform alongside Sean Gray on guitar and Isla Callister on fiddle. Together, we have developed the sound that audiences hear when they come to one of my gigs, and I am grateful to have had them by my side both on stage and throughout the arranging process for this album.

Once I had settled on the songs and the atmosphere I wanted to create for each one, we spent around six months working through the material together. We explored each song in depth, looking for ways to arrange them that felt fresh and exciting while remaining sympathetic to their origins. For us, the words and the stories had to remain at the heart of the music. We wanted to create arrangements that allowed those stories to hold the spotlight, while also making the sound feel like an authentic reflection of ourselves as musicians. The resulting album moves between fun, upbeat rhythmic numbers and much more stripped back arrangements that allow the emotional weight of the songs to shine through.

In the Studio

The album was produced by the amazingly talented John Lowrie. It was a real pleasure to work with him to further develop our arrangements and establish a definitive sound for the album. We recorded over three weeks at Solas Sound with Gus Stirrat, and it was a joy to have everyone together in the studio, bouncing ideas off one another and allowing the arrangements to develop organically.

Adding to the sound of the album were Ewan Baird on bodhrán and Charlie Stewart on bass, while John also contributed piano, percussion… and pretty much anything else he could get his hands on!! Each musician brought something different to the recordings, helping us to build a sound that felt both rooted in the tradition and representative of where I am as a musician now.

I was also incredibly grateful to have the wonderful Gaelic singer Kathleen MacInnes join me as a guest vocalist. Kathleen has long been one of my favourite singers so having her voice on the album was particularly special. She features on Ceann Tràigh Ghruinneart, a haunting lament for Sir Lachlan Maclean, who died on Islay during Blàr Tràigh Ghruinneart while fighting to take the land from the MacDonalds. Bringing our voices together on this
song created what I hope is one of the most poignant moments on the album.

Language, Community and Continuity

One of the things that became increasingly important to me throughout the making of Mo Thìr was the idea of passing things on. I grew up with only one parent who spoke Gaelic and I am very conscious of the potential loss of Islay’s local dialect. The island has its own particular relationship with the Gaelic language, and the songs contained within this album are part of that cultural inheritance.

Recording them has made me more aware of the responsibility I feel to continue learning, improving my own Gaelic confidence and knowledge and hopefully contributing in some small way to keeping these songs, stories and language alive.

For me, traditional music is not something fixed in the past. It is something that is continually carried forward, evolving with each generation. We inherit songs from the people who came before us, but we also interpret them, arrange them, sing them and give them new life. I hope Mo Thìr can be part of that.

The Visuals

I wanted the album’s visuals to feel raw, delicate and closely connected to the beauty of nature. Film photography felt like a natural way to capture that. I worked with Nicky Murray to create a series of photographs that reflect the atmosphere of the album. These images feature throughout the album artwork and accompanying media.

The artwork was then brought together by Pearse at WiseLove Studio, who created a beautifully simple and effortless flow across the album packaging. I wanted the visual identity to reflect the intimacy of the songs and the connection to the landscape.

What’s to Come

Over the past few years I have felt incredibly lucky to tour and perform at festivals both here in Scotland and abroad. I genuinely feel privileged to be able to call performing my job, and I hope that this new album will allow me to continue sharing my music, culture and stories with a wide range of audiences.

📷 Mairi McGillivray Trio @ Celtic Connections (photo by Kris Kesiak)

One of the things I love most about Gaelic music is its ability to communicate emotion even when the listener doesn’t understand every word. I hope Mo Thìr can connect with Gaelic speakers and non-Gaelic speakers alike and perhaps encourage people to think about their own relationship with home, language, family and belonging.

With the busy schedules of everyone involved, we will be waiting a few months before bringing the album together as a full live show. I am really looking forward to getting back together with the musicians and creating a performance that can capture the atmosphere and beauty of the album – so keep an eye out!!

CDs and downloads of Mo Thìr are available through Bandcamp, and the album is also available on the usual streaming and digital platforms.

It is a privilege to share these songs and stories, and to add my own voice to the rich tradition from which they come. Mo Thìr has given me an opportunity to look back at where I come from, to celebrate the people and places that shaped me, and to think about how I can carry those things forward. I hope that while listening you can find something of your own sense of home and belonging within these songs.

📷 Maggie MacInnes – by Vincent O’Brien

As some of you might know, my mother Flora MacNeil and I performed often together and nearly all the Gaelic songs I sing and have recorded, I learned from her. She learned them orally, mostly from her mother, grandmother, aunt, and uncle as she grew up in Barra. She has, without doubt and by a large measure, been the most important musical influence of my life. We were also extremely close…. I know that sounds easy to say but it is the truth that she was my closest friend in the world as well as being a wonderful mother to me and my four siblings. When she passed away in May 2015, the loss and sadness I felt was overwhelming.

📷 Maggie and Flora singing in Turin, Italy – by A. MacInnes

The first time I sang in public after she died was at the MG ALBA Scots Trad Music Awards ceremony in December 2015, where Simon Thoumire and the team put together a lovely tribute to her. I remember walking out onto the stage not knowing if any sound would come out of my mouth but, as is often the case, the music took over and I got through it.

Some years later, I came across some cassette tapes which my mother had given to me years before. I remembered her telling me that she had recorded lots of songs for an Australian folklorist, Dr James Kalokerinos, from when she was newly married to my father in 1955 until around 1961. He had recorded her on a large reel-to-reel tape recorder which he bought and left with her when he went back to Australia. Dr Kalokerinos arranged for the recordings to be put onto cassette tapes which he sent to my mother from Australia in the 1970s. I was intrigued but always reluctant to play the tapes in case they broke in the player due to their age. Also, I still had my mother there to pass on the songs to me directly, so I didn’t pay them too much attention. However, they came back into my mind after she passed away. When I was with her, my mother was always surprising me with beautiful songs I had never heard her sing before as she had a huge repertoire, none of which she had written down. I thought maybe there would be one or two special discoveries on these tapes.

This was all in the back of my mind for some years as I gradually began to perform more regularly again, releasing my 6th solo album, Port Bàn, in January 2020 just before the COVID pandemic. While at home during lockdown, I made the decision to get these recordings digitised and see what was there. I felt that it was wrong for me to hold on to them without investigating them further and possibly sharing them with others. I also got time then to go through my mother’s papers including letters, newspaper clippings, photos and performance reviews which gave me additional information about Dr Kalokerinos, their friendship and his passion for her singing and her songs. My interest and resolve grew.

In 2024, I applied to Creative Scotland for a grant to have the recordings digitised and for me to research the songs which were there and develop a show which would pay tribute to my mother and other tradition bearers from Barra who passed on the songs to her.

I am very pleased to say that my application for a grant was successful and the work began. I asked Chris Waite of Gran’s House Studio in Biggar to digitise the recordings and clean up those which had a lot of background noise. Chris shared all the digital files with me while I was at our family house in Barra. I cannot begin to tell you how emotional I felt listening to my mother speaking and singing. My father, Alister, is also speaking on the tapes and encouraging her to sing songs which he particularly liked. I listened, laughed and cried all the way through what turned out to be around 180 songs. This was just a fraction of my mother’s repertoire, but it is a wide and varied selection.

I began the process of researching the songs. This was very time consuming, but it was a “labour of love”. Some were songs I had heard my mother sing over the years but, as hoped, there were a number of others which I had never heard my mother or anyone else sing before…..and I loved them!

In order to get as much background information to the sort of life my mother would have had growing up in the 30s and 40s in Barra, I came to Barra on a number of occasions to speak to people of my mother’s generation who could share their memories of my mother and growing up on the island when getting together to sing and tell stories was a regular pastime. It became clear that some families were far more into that sort of thing than others. My mother always said she felt fortunate that songs were all around her at home and she just “soaked them up” rather than consciously learning them.

📷 Flora MacNeil, photographer unknown (from Flora’s own private photos)

I took a long time deciding which songs to include in the show. I chose some of my favourites of the songs I had never heard before, so that they would take on a new life. All the songs chosen helped me to tell something of my mother’s journey with the songs from Barra to many international stages of the world and to pay tribute to the tradition bearers of Barra more generally. One song which comes to mind in terms of helping tell my mother’s musical journey includes Mhic Iarla nam Bratach Bàna (Earl of the White Banners), which my mother sang with another great singer and piper from Barra, Calum Johnston, at the Edinburgh People’s Festival Ceilidh of 1951, organised by Hamish Henderson. They were the only two Gaelic singers invited to perform and this concert is often referred to as a major catalyst which sparked the folk music revival of the 50s and 60s. For the show, I decided to emulate their performance, and I am very pleased that my son, Calum Park, was able to take the part of Calum Johnston and we perform it as a duo in the show.

I was so excited about the quality of the songs that I resolved to make a new album and Creative Scotland clearly felt that this was a worthwhile endeavour and supported me once again.

The album is called Uiseagan Bharraigh which means, Barra Skylarks, after all the singers from Barra who have been singing these songs for generations.

The recording process was joyful and creative from the start. I began by working closely with my son, Calum, who plays guitar and fiddle, and we started developing some arrangements together. For other songs, I wanted a very subtle approach with textures and sounds rather than the standard style of arrangement and it was at this stage that Calum introduced me to the amazing musician, Dan Brown. I listened to Dan’s music, especially his use of electronics and piano, and thought this was the direction I wanted to explore for certain tracks. After our first meeting, I knew that the fit was perfect and that Dan understood where I was coming from with my ideas for the songs. I can’t thank Dan and Calum enough for all that they brought to the songs in those early stages, and we built from there with more fantastic musicians. My first choice of cellist was the wonderful, Wendy Weatherby. Wendy and I first played together in the 1980s and it has been fantastic to be working with her again. My life is very blessed with many musical connections…one of which has introduced me to the beautiful fiddle playing of Robyn Gray who is well known on the folk-scene, especially in Ayrshire, where I now live. Robyn is soon to be marrying my other son, Ruaraidh, and we talk about and play music all together often. Add to this line-up, the superb pipe and flute playing of Ailis Sutherland and the innovative, sensitive percussion playing of Alex Palmer, and I must say that for me, I could not have picked a better ensemble for this album. I feel/hope that my album presents the songs in a new fresh way with an energy which never takes away from the raw heartfelt beauty of them.

The Creative Scotland funding has also allowed me to create a ‘Flora’ website (www.floramacneil.com) to release the archive to the world. My mother was always happy to pass on her songs to other singers who were interested, so this is being done in the same spirit. I thought how special it would be to dedicate a site to this particular set of recordings which would allow me to add information about the songs, my mother and some of the other tradition bearers from my family.

We first performed the show, ‘The Kalokerinos Tapes’, at Celtic Connections earlier this year and released the album on 15th June. We will be touring the islands soon:

HebCelt, An Lanntair, Stornoway, 18th July
Cnoc Soillier, South Uist, 20th July
Castlebay Hall, Barra, 21st July
Under Canvas, Eden Court, Inverness, 23rd July (trio gig)
Blas Festival, Cultarlann, Inverness, 9th September
LAS, Portree, Skye, 10th September
National Piping Centre, Glasgow, 17th September
Scottish Storytelling Centre, Edinburgh, 18th September

📷 Maggie and her band performing at the Harbour Arts Centre in Irvine on 19th June, 2026 – by Pete Heywood

The journey to this point has been a very emotional one from the start and I could not be happier to be taking the show on the road and, of course to Barra, shining a light on these songs and the legacy of my mother, Flora MacNeil.

The album (both digital and physical formats) is available on my website and also on my Bandcamp and other streaming platforms.

📷 Photo by Somhairle MacDonald

My new album and most recent exhibition at An Talla Solais in Ullapool.

Interestingly, the previous blog I wrote for the Traditional Music Forum in 2020, also had a timing theme. (A flashback to the sudden luxury of time that Covid restrictions afforded us and how that inevitably led to slowing down.) So, it seems I have been interested in the concept of time for a number of years now. The result of all this contemplation is my new album Tìm, and my latest painting exhibition at An Talla Solais art gallery in Ullapool.

Time is a precious commodity in today’s society and, sadly, all too often we hear of folk never having enough time for the things they love. I am happiest and most relaxed when time feels slow and there is no rush. Writing music and painting often transports me to that mindful state. They are a form of meditation for me and I feel so fortunate to have this in my life to bring me to the here and now, being present and in the moment. I wanted this exhibition and album to invite people to do the same, to encourage them to pause, look and listen, bringing them into that exact moment in time.

When I think of time I think of history, of aging, of rusting, ruins, weathered objects, of place, of rocks, of maps, of time passing, of weather, of the people I most want to spend it with, and of the things that matter the most.

In preparation for the show, I spent a lot of time at Badentarbet, in my native Coigach, painting en plein air. It is one of my favourite places to be and there is so much ancestral history there, most notably my Great Great Grandmother, Anna Bhàn, was from there (named in one of the few successful Highland Clearance stories of a resistance led by women. Please do check out the album, Anna Bhàn, that I made in collaboration with my cousin, Rachel Newton, which was released in 2024.)

The rusted buoys, anchors and boats on the shore at Badentarbet are objects that have witnessed times gone by, providing a link from the past to the present and they are such a visual feast for a painter. There is a rusted sense of colour and texture in the resulting finished work, and a depth of mark-making that invites a slow study. Another nearby location, the NatureScot site of Knockan Crag has also been a special place to literally see time, through the geology of the rocks. Maybe this album will be a big hit amongst geologists!

In essence, my work is a visceral response to each moment in time, turning up every day, enjoying the process of creative interpretation, the stillness versus the movement, appreciating the small, the slow changes in landscape tones, and the ever-shifting skylines. I used a variety of media for the work, mostly mixed media and acrylics, some watercolour and some pencil drawings. Sadly, the exhibition is now finished but if you would like to see more of my artwork, please do get in touch to visit my studio in Ullapool. (See contact details below.)

The music I have written is gentle and meditative. We know that music is a marker of time, and my immediate inspiration has tended to be appreciative of a specific place and a singular occasion. For example, the song about sitting at Old Dornie watching the boats takes you there for that moment (see lyrics below) or, as in another composition, the quiet watching of the incremental weather changes in Ullapool from my kitchen window.

Significant inspiration to this theme has been Ceòl Mòr (known as Piobaireachd, meaning, ‘big music’ in the tradition of the Highland bagpipe), the variations inherent in its structure being both meditative and grounding. It sounds as old as it sounds contemporary, and it relates as much to this moment as to the past through the use of low-fi recording techniques and timeless instruments such as the small pipes.

I recorded the album at Gloworm Recording Studios in Glasgow with Iain Hutcheson. We have worked together on many previous album projects so we have a good understanding and similar approach to recording. Just as well, as we only had six days to record the music! It was a tricky balance, working on the visual art and the music at the same time. Thankfully I had written all the songs and was pretty organised, but moving back and fore between the two disciplines did push my capabilities to the absolute max!

The music played alongside the visual art in the gallery space throughout the show, and it was a special treat to perform the music live with Mike Vass in the gallery to celebrate the launch of the album. We are going on tour this August, so please do come and see us! (Ticket links below.)

The exhibition extended into new audiences, by way of me giving a couple of artist talks at the gallery and through me delivering some school workshops. I found preparation for the artist talk really interesting: it made me consider the mechanics of the process in so much depth. I started with the composition side to immerse myself in the theme of time and followed it with an artist residency at the Salmon Bothy at Badentarbet in September 2025. I find that getting away from home and escaping everyday interruptions to thought is really necessary to create headspace for a project.

Text became an important part of the work, with some of the song lyrics ending up on the album and printed on the gallery walls.

Old Dornie

Down to Old Dornie
Where the little boats shine
All out of time
Strung on a line

They are anchored together
Like pearls on a string
And no-one’s in sight x2

All flotsam and jetsam
Of what’s left behind
A magpie’s delight x2

My feet walk off starboard
Westerly homewards
Down the flag iris shore x2

Down to Old Dornie
Where the little boats shine
All out of time x3

Lyrics by Jan Kilpatrick

I Swallowed The Sky

I swallowed the sky
It didn’t even try to stop me

I coughed up the clouds
They laughed out loud
To warn me

I can taste the hot sun
It’s that strong one
To save me

I’ll breathe through the wind
It’ll brush against my skin
To show me

I’ll put the sea on my plate
It’s not too late
To fill me

I’ll never be full of this land.

Thankfully there are still folk who enjoy having an object to treasure and so who buy a physical album. I certainly am one of those people and so I was keen to print the song lyrics in the CD booklet to enhance that experience that goes beyond the digital. You can order the CD from my bandcamp page or my website here mairearadgreen.co.uk.

If you are also someone who would prefer to see my artwork in real life and would like to visit my studio in Ullapool, please do get in touch at [email protected].

And now to the live show – another ‘in person’ experience that is good for the soul! As I mentioned, I will be on tour with Mike Vass in August and below is a list of where we will be, with a link to buy tickets.

This project has been so wonderful. Creating work for the exhibition and the album has been mind expanding and incredible learning experience. Making work on this scale has only been possible with support from Creative Scotland. Thank you very much to them and to everyone who has bought my work along the way.

Thank you for taking the interest to read this, and for supporting my art and music. I hope to see you either at my studio or at a live show in August.

‘The older I get the more I appreciate time and have a much clearer idea of how art and music never can be a waste of my time.’

Thanks so much,

Mairearad x

——————–

AUGUST TOUR

01 August 2026 – 7.30pm, The Tolbooth, Stirling 

06 August 2026 – 8pm, The Barn, Banchory 

07 August 2026 – 7.30pm, The Glad Cafe, Glasgow 

28 August 2026 – 7.30pm, Seall Events, Minginish Community Hall, Skye.

29 August 2026 – 7.30pm, Coigach Community Hall, Coigach 

Website: mairearadgreen.co.uk

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@mairearad

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mairearad/

Bandcamp: https://mairearadgreen.bandcamp.com

📷 Photos by Jette Jaacks

Ashes to Art is my second solo album that was just released in April. Without intending to, the album became a deeply personal reflection of my journey over the past few years. Broadly speaking it conveys a theme of transformation: that which comes from overcoming a season of challenges and trials, then stepping into a new, brighter season of growth and opportunity.

To give the album some context, I will rewind 6 years to 2020 when we were in the midst of Covid while also going through the Brexit transition. While we were all facing a time of deep uncertainty, I sensed even prior to this time, that I was lacking some sort of artistic direction, and I couldn’t figure out exactly what was missing, or indeed what direction I needed to go in. As the end of 2020 approached, I made a choice that sent my life on a completely different trajectory. I moved to Denmark to join my now husband, Christoffer, who shortly after became my band mate and drummer.

At first I thought that half a year would suffice living in Denmark, especially having never imagined moving to another country, but I soon discovered that the rules dictated by the UK leaving Europe would make things very difficult or more or less impossible in my situation should I return to the UK then wish to move to Denmark again in the future. I had to accept my situation and let it take its course. It is a strange feeling moving to another country that is not native English speaking, and everyday chores like going to a food store independently feels like a triumph! Over time I gained my confidence while starting to explore new directions with regards to my music work.

I was quite closely connected with the student community at the city of Esbjerg’s music conservatoire, as Christoffer was a student there at the time, studying under the rhythmic and jazz department. Despite the fact that the school hosted Denmark’s only folk department, I found myself connecting mostly with students from other departments. Denmark has a lot smaller folk community compared to Scotland, and so it was naturally easier to meet musicians from other genres. This gradual immersion into the jazz and rhythmical worlds, from which I had no prior experience, was pivotal in terms of my own music and artistic identity.

At the time, I was writing a lot of new music for the harp, and envisioned working on my first album. When I received some funding for this, it felt natural to get a couple musicians on board that would add a completely new element and sound to the music. I invited a local electric guitarist and of course, Christoffer on the drums! That first rehearsal together felt somewhat like a lightbulb moment – the sound was electronic with effect pedals, elements of improvisation, and original Scottish folk-inspired melodies. It was like a ‘Yes!’ moment. This was the sound I had been longing for but not realising and suddenly I felt truly musically fulfilled. This was the catalyst moment that was the foundation of my first album, Land of Eden (2023), and a few years later, Ashes to Art.

It was exciting with a brand new direction that I could explore and develop with the harp. The instrument has opened up for some truly wonderful opportunities and collaborations in Denmark. I have often heard it being referred to as an ‘exotic’ instrument here and it has been a true privilege to share a part of my culture, identity and home with a new country, while making so many wonderful connections through the harp.

Of course with any move to a new place, a season of trials will inevitably follow. I have questioned my move many times, the fact that I had to start again in building up a community, then the question about leaving my family, friends, and the life that I had built in Glasgow before moving. As I have tried to process all these thoughts and feelings that of course still linger with me sometimes, I am in no doubt that the move opened up for a constant string of new experiences and inspiration, which has informed a lot of my work: in particular, with the new album Ashes to Art.

Over the years I have developed a deeper appreciation and longing for nature, and Danish nature has most certainly inspired me in new ways. To be honest, I was initially challenged in coming to a flat country, having grown up in the hills and mountains of Aberdeenshire, but then I got the opportunity to live on a beautiful island called Fanø, for a few months. This lies on the west coast of the country just by the city of Esbjerg. Fanø might be flat but it has the most incredible beaches and lies by the Wadden Sea, which is the largest unbroken system of intertidal sand and mud flats in the world. When the tide stretches back it leaves sand beds that stretch out as far as the eye can see. It’s truly a spectacle to witness and changed my perception of flatness! Living on Fanø inspired quite a bit of my work and recent album.

Ashes to Art is a natural development from my debut album, Land of Eden. While Land of Eden featured my original trio with guitar and drums, I wanted the second album to be more of a collaborative work with musicians from both Denmark and Scotland. It was recorded at Solas Sound Studio with Gus Stirrat who I have worked with on previous albums. Working with Gus was the natural choice for this album as he really understands your musical vision and brings the music to life in a whole new way. I was also delighted to be able to record with the exceptional Chris Amer on guitar, as well as my good friend and mighty fiddle player, Bernadette Kellermann, on strings. I was also very fortunate to have the excellent Pàdruig Morrison feature on accordion for one of the tracks. Christoffer of course joined and recorded on the drums.

The final track of the album, Notes You Wrote, is a song that means a lot to me. The lyrics are taken from greeting cards that my grandmother, Audrey Sumpton, has given to me for every celebratory occasion you could think of over the years. She has such a gift for writing the most loving messages, all gently threaded with imagery of nature, birdsong and the seasons. I always felt like her words were too good to be kept inside a card and I wanted to give her a voice in the world. I adapted them for music with the help of the vocalist on the track, Dina Dánialsdóttir. Dina is originally from the Faroe Islands but now lives in Denmark.

It was important for me to establish a connection between both Denmark and Scotland in the album, and to include musicians from both countries, as the music does not solely have its roots in one place. I feel deeply grounded in my Scottish folk roots, but I have discovered that music comes most naturally to me when I let in other cultures, to shape, inform and challenge what I know, as well as my understanding of music: how it can function in society, its ability to unite people from very different backgrounds, and its undeniable ability to establish deep human connections.

Through Ashes to Art I want to celebrate connection, collaboration, perseverance and hope. I find these qualities also in nature, and am inspired that from a tiny seed in the dirt, grows something that is beautiful, perfect, and in itself a small piece of art.

Album Artwork by Sissel Geyti. Album Design by Andreas Bevan

www.luciehendry.bandcamp.com
www.luciehendry.com
www.youtube.com/@luciehendry

📷 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, Ireland, Wales, Isle of Man, Shetland, England, Sweden, Norway, Lithuania, Canada and the United States (Maine). I met a couple of young Scottish singers who hadn’t been before and were revelling in the mix of folk and the chance to listen to and participate in such a variety of singing. The venue, the Scottish Storytelling Centre in Edinburgh, really lends itself to this kind of event: people flow round the building between panel discussions in the auditorium to workshops in the library and singing circles in the large space by the café, sometimes breaking off to have a quiet chat in a corner. There’s a real sense of community as folk interact across the weekend, former connections are renewed and new ones begun.

This year’s keynote talk was given by English singer Angeline Morrison. She spoke of growing up with English folksongs while being aware of her Black identity, giving as an example the powerful ballad ‘The Brown Girl’ (Roud 180, Child 292). This had been a ‘talisman’ for Angeline since she was a teenage folkie, imagining herself as the main character rejected by her lover ‘because I was so brown’. We also heard moving stories of her recent project involving extensive research in archives as she searched for evidence of the history of Black culture in England, and its musical expressions. This resulted in her album The Sorrow Songs: Folk Songs of Black British Experience. Angeline’s talk made me think more deeply about the demands traditional songs make on us, not just as stories but also in the emotional connection they evoke in the singer and the listener.

📷 Angeline Morrison (by ABCassidy Photography)

Panel sessions with various themes ran throughout the weekend covering diverse topics such as learning and passing on songs, practical strategies for encouraging participatory singing, and the opportunities offered by UNESCO’s ‘Living Heritage’ Framework in preserving and promoting traditional singing practices. For me, a highlight was the panel on the Irish language sean-nós (‘old style’) solo singing tradition, with Órla Ní Fhinneadha, Ellen de Búrca and Cathal Ó Curráin. All three performed beautiful examples of the repertoire. They also gave us an insight into the learning and teaching of sean-nós, including in schools, the genealogy of transmission, and the competition environment. We learned about the primary role of storytelling in the songs. The intimate nature of the idiom was illustrated by Ellen’s singing from behind a chair as she held on to the back – apparently a common stance for sean-nós singers – as a means of support. The focused nature of the topic and the thoughtful way that the singers shared their experience and contributions from the audience made this a rich session.

📷 Panel session (by ABCassidy Photography)

There was a menu of workshops including Maine worksongs, Swedish, Norwegian and Scottish Gaelic songs. I joined Steve Byrne’s on Scots song. Making no concessions for a group of participants with a variety of languages and experience, Steve taught 5 songs dense with Scots language: ‘Moss o Burreldale’, ‘Ballad of the Speaking Heart’, ‘Brisk Young Lad’, ‘We’re aa Noddin’ and ‘Hey ca’ thro’. We all jumped in and learned, I suppose, by immersion! I love singing in Scots – and in songs like these tunes and lyrics feel tightly fused and really rewarding to sing. The item I knew of but had not sung before was the humorous ‘We’re aa Noddin’. Steve gave us the version which came via Robert Burns, pointing out the theme (drunkenness) and the dangers of the chorus in becoming a likely ‘earworm’. When I came home, I did some research and went down some interesting rabbit holes! The ‘nodding song’ seems to have had extraordinary success during the 18th-19th century in many versions including beyond Scotland, the rhythmic repetitive chorus lending itself to parodies of all sorts. ‘We’re all nodding’ even became the title of a lithograph of 1861 depicting a sleepy soldiers on horseback. It’s a reminder of how traditional songs can be a rewarding portal through which to explore the past, and how malleable they can be as they’re adapted for different contexts.

📷 Workshop with Steve Byrne (by ABCassidy Photography)

While larger singing sessions were also going on, at the intimate song circle I went to there was encouragement but no pressure to sing, and no ‘policing’ of song choices. This was a good opportunity for younger participants, including some Swedish students unused to singing in public, to try out their voices and their songs. I used it as a chance to sing a couple of songs I’d not done in a while to see if I could remember the words. I was reminded that the song circle format is a rich resource not only for ‘performance’ but also learning, practising and sharing stories in a supportive setting. And not least that listening is as important as singing.

📷 Singers at a small song circle (by ABCassidy Photography)

I couldn’t make the Friday evening pub session but heard next day that it had been a great night. One of the highlights was an hour-long impromptu flow of mouth-music (puirt-à-beul) and dancing songs from different singing cultures, which Brian Ó hEadhra dubbed a ‘puirt-off’. I wouldn’t be surprised if it is reprised next year! A Saturday night concert offered guests an opportunity for a more formal presentation of their songs, but this, too, demonstrated the collective ethos of the weekend, with participation across the performances and including the audience.

I came away reflecting once more on the lives of songs and their power to bring the past into the present and connect us across cultures. In June I’m heading to Aberdeen to take part in NASC’s big sister, the North Atlantic Fiddle Convention, to play, learn and talk about tunes and dancing. The format of both festivals is a rich mix of activities and opportunities to experience the traditional music of our North Atlantic neighbours and form musical friendships between these countries. Meeting and sharing music face-to-face in this way highlights contrasts and commonalities which only deepen our understanding of the factors that shape and sustain traditions. NASC is now run in partnership with the Traditional Music Forum of Scotland, and I found myself thinking of what it takes to organise events like this, and the crucial part played by organisations and institutions in – literally – keeping the show on the road. There’s an inclusivity and a democratic ethos to NASC which bodes well for its own longevity, and which I’m sure is the key to our individual and collective efforts to cultivating our traditional arts well into the future.

📷 Song circle (by ABCassidy Photography)

📷 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 to be profound in a contrived way, but simply draws out the beauty inherent in ordinary things. His poems help us notice how remarkable the ordinary can be.

Danny Nicolson had a similar instinct, but his tool was the camera rather than the pen. Now in his 90s, he spent his working life as a joiner in his native Orkney Islands. A meticulous attention to detail, amazing work ethic, and trustworthy character earned him a strong reputation, and the islands are still littered with examples of his craftsmanship in people’s homes, offices, farms, churches and even the BBC Orkney studios.

At some point in the mid-20th century, he invested some of his wages in a film camera and became one of Orkney’s then small number of amateur photographers. Over the following decades, he noticed, captured and celebrated the beauty of ordinary life, building up an amazing library of film photographs of the people, places, objects and stories of Orkney through the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. For years, the collection only existed in the form of film ‘slides’ until, recently, one of his sons patiently digitised every single image, unlocking access to this amazing window into life of a past era.

My name is Chris Amer and Danny Nicolson is my grandfather. I’m also a Scottish guitar player living in Glasgow. I play electric guitar, acoustic guitar, pedal steel and a unique 7-string theorbed tenor guitar that I designed with Taran Guitars in Fife.

www.taranguitars.co.uk/chris-amer

Like all of Danny Nicolson’s grandchildren, I got to enter his world in one immersive moment by receiving access to this vast, hitherto unseen photo library all at once. It was amazing, it felt like stepping into his mind and looking back, literally, at a lifetime’s worth of memories. It was a window into a reality that was very familiar, and at the same time, very far away. I recognised so much: familiar people, relatives and family members, the places that they lived, landscapes, townscapes and interiors that I’ve seen all my life. In my mind, the feeling of ‘memory’ was triggered, even though I wasn’t even alive when the photographs were taken. It was like I was getting to ‘remember’ memories that weren’t actually my memories. It was intense nostalgia for a time period I didn’t live through.

It’s easy to romanticise the past. Sometimes it’s the safest escape when life in the present is difficult or anxious or unideal. One of my favourite writers, C S Lewis, has written in several essays about the phenomenon of nostalgia as being the inaccurate misplacing of the ‘ideal’. We seem to feel that life should be better than it is: the present isn’t good enough, the future is too uncertain, so the past can become the place where we project all our desires for the good life. “It must have been so much better back then”.

I’ve learned that (perhaps due to my personality type) I am very predisposed to doing that. Looking through my grandfather’s photo collection was interesting and aesthetically enriching, yes, but it also provided me a way to ‘escape’ back to the past, back to the more ideal reality I thought was there.

That experience has fuelled my music-making in recent years, and my new album Making Peace With What Is, is a collection of musical sketches that came out of trips down my grandfather’s memory lane. The title, Making Peace With What Is, might seem a little bit wordy, but it’s a phrase that’s been in my mind as I’ve been processing the photos in relation to my own life. I’ve had to reconcile myself to the present day whilst feeling nostalgia for a past that feels strangely familiar and which actually seems much nicer, but which I can never actually visit. It’s been a process of literally ‘making peace’ with what actually is.

The music is largely multi-tracked guitar. I played layers of acoustic guitar, electric guitar, tenor guitar, pedal steel and bass guitar. As guitar is my main voice, my process has always been to compose on it, and so the music came together at home as I sketched and layered ideas. I recorded the music at Solas Sound in Glasgow in two ‘sessions’ a year apart. Gus Stirrat, the engineer, captures the sound of my tenor guitar like nobody else. The first five tracks of the album were recorded in summer 2022, and the latter five in summer 2023. Originally, I didn’t even think of the music as a coherent album, but as two separate EPs. Only laterally, as I’ve reflected on my process, did I realise that, actually, all the music came from the same source.

As a (part-time, sort of) jazz musician, I’ve always been comfortable improvising, and the music is a genuine mix of composed melodies and improvised lines. The main melodies and harmonic structures are all composed and laid out in advance, but I deliberately left lots of ‘space’ to fill with improvisation. Throughout the album, there are sections where I’ve layered up multiple improvised electric and tenor guitar voices. I love that these are unique moments in time that are unrepeatable (they never come out the same way twice), which feels really appropriate for a project all about moments in time that can’t be re-lived. I tended to do everything in one take and then leave it as is.

One of my favourite guitar players is Bill Frisell – I think he’s able to deeply encapsulate feelings and spaces in his playing. I really hear the vast horizons of the Midwest USA in his sound, but also his humility and understated character. I’ve always chased ‘feelings’ in my guitar playing rather than specific ‘licks’ – one of my friends and collaborators said that it reminds them of brush strokes on a canvas. I also invited my friend Stephen Henderson, an exceptional drummer, to add some drum parts to the second five tracks. You can really hear the difference that makes. I feel like Stephen punctuates (like highlighting in black ink) the music and brings out the best of it. I love what he brought to the sound world.

Tracks like Arable Concrete (track 1) have an airy, imaginative quality. This track came from looking at photographs of new towns and post-war building projects when they were brand new. It’s striking how clean and optimistic they look – they were ‘arable’ – fertile with potential.

Living In A Filter (track 7) tries to capture the feeling of ‘horizon’. One of my favourite photographs (which I chose for the front cover) is of my Granny Molly and her four children (one of which is my mum) standing on a cliff looking at a sea and sky that seems to stretch limitlessly outwards. The lower resolution of the film photo makes the horizon less defined and detailed, but richer in imaginative potential. Stephen added an amazing Steve Gadd style drum part which simultaneously creates a sense of forward motion and stillness.

Short Ago (track 8) is all about my great-grandfather George Rendall. He was a dairy farmer in Orkney and I last saw him on his 100th birthday back in 2002. He had a wicked sense of humour, and stories of his quiet but lively quips, jokes and pranks are still told in the family. The phrase ‘short ago’ is one I’ve heard many Orkney relatives use. Stephen again brought the track alive with a really cool drum part. I remember my performance direction in the studio was something like, “think metronome meets drum and bass” – he nailed it first time.

The album was mostly multi-tracked guitar because I’ve always found it easier to make music on my own. Reading Bill Frisell’s biography made me feel even more of an affinity with him, as he talked about his shy personality and how that made him hesitant at times. I definitely resonate with that – it’s taken me a lot of years to build enough confidence to ask people to play gigs of my own music. Amazingly though, I was able to launch this album at Celtic Connections this year with an amazing six-piece ensemble featuring some of my favourite musicians and friends – Matt Carmichael, Fergus McCreadie, Gus Stirrat, Mhairi Marwick and Stephen Henderson. It was an experience I’ll never forget. In the year ahead, I’m really looking forward to some more performance opportunities – especially a slot at the St Magnus Festival in Orkney in June which will feel ‘right’ on many levels.

If any of this intrigues you, please feel free to visit my website or bandcamp site where you can get a copy of the album, and drop me a wee follow on socials to hear about upcoming gigs etc.
Thanks so much for reading 🙂

www.chrisamer.com
chrisamer.bandcamp.com

📷 Photo above by Cami Lemoine

📷 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 gatherings — but this festival stood out as something truly unique. From the moment I arrived, it felt like the entire building was humming with energy, curiosity, and the shared love of free-reed instruments.

This year, I also had the privilege of hosting two workshops: one on Scottish session tunes, and another on accompaniment techniques. Teaching is still a fairly new step for me, so being given the trust and space to lead at such a well-loved festival was both exciting and meaningful.

Workshops That Turned Into Conversations

My session-tunes workshop explored how to navigate fast, tune-heavy sessions with confidence — breaking down phrasing, stylistic details, and some classic Scottish repertoire. The accompaniment workshop focused on building texture, supportive harmony, and rhythmic ideas without overshadowing the melody.

But what really made both sessions special was the atmosphere in the room. People came with open minds, great questions, and a real eagerness to exchange ideas. Instead of feeling like I was standing at the front of a classroom, it felt like we were all part of the same musical conversation, contributing from different experiences and styles. That collaborative spirit ran through the entire weekend.

One little highlight for me was performing on the same programme as Allan MacDonald. His influence on the Traditional Music course at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (RCS) is well known, so seeing my name alongside his felt like a gentle full-circle moment in my time as a student. It’s always grounding to realise how connected the tradition is, and how special it is to share spaces with the people who’ve shaped it.

📷 Photo by Barb Briggs

A Festival Held Together by Great Organisation: Frances Wilkins

A huge amount of the festival’s success has to be credited to Frances Wilkins, the Director of the festival. Her organisation, vision, and attention to detail were at the heart of everything that made the weekend run so smoothly.

Frances managed to bring together an impressive line-up of artists, facilitate workshops, manage venues, coordinate schedules, and ensure that every performer felt fully supported — and she did all of this with calmness, clarity, and genuine warmth. It was obvious how much dedication went into creating an environment where musicians could thrive and audiences could feel at home.

Her passion for free-reed traditions and her commitment to encouraging players of all levels shaped the tone of the entire event. Every room was set up thoughtfully, every transition felt seamless, and every artist I spoke to mentioned how supported they felt. It’s no exaggeration to say that Frances’s work held the whole festival together and allowed the rest of us to simply enjoy making music.

Concertina Conversations and Female Representation

Another massive joy of the weekend was spending time with fellow concertina players Sandra Kerr, Eva Carroll, Méabh Mulligan, Alex Wade, and Frances Wilkins. They are all incredible musicians, and having the chance to talk technique, share tunes, and reflect on our different musical journeys was genuinely energising.

Seeing such strong female representation in the free-reed world was uplifting. Traditional music has been evolving steadily in that direction, but moments like this, make the change feel real and visible. It created a sense of belonging and excitement for the future of the instrument.

Aberdeen’s Musical Heartbeat

Throughout the festival, Aberdeen’s local traditional music community shone brightly. The city’s musicians — box players, moothie players, fiddlers, and multi-instrumentalists — brought a distinctive North-East character to the weekend. Whether it was polished on-stage sets or hallway sessions, you could hear the depth of the region’s musical identity everywhere.

The festival felt rooted in the city’s tradition while welcoming influences from all over.

📷 Photo by Barb Briggs

A Welcoming Festival From Start to Finish

The real magic of the Button Boxes and Moothies Festival was its openness. Whether someone walked in with decades of experience or a brand-new instrument, there was a place for them. The kindness and encouragement across workshops, performances, and sessions made the whole weekend feel like a gathering of friends — even among people who had just met.

For me personally, the festival represented everything I love about traditional music: teaching, learning, performing, connecting, and celebrating the instrument I’ve dedicated my studies to. I left Aberdeen feeling inspired, encouraged, and grateful.

A Weekend to Remember

As I head into the final part of my studies at RCS, this festival will stand out as a highlight of my year. It brought together community, creativity, and tradition in the best possible way. And it reminded me — once again — that music grows strongest when shared.

A huge congratulations to Frances Wilkins for bringing this unforgettable weekend to life, and to everyone who played, listened, learned, or simply joined the journey.

Here’s to the next gathering of button boxes, moothies, and the wonderful people who play them.

📷 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 art teacher, music tutor, singer, artist, musician, designer, mum, and student. Life is busy, but life is certainly never boring. Creativity is at the heart of most of the things I love to do, and I thrive on learning, reflecting and adapting. I’m utterly inspired by my surroundings, especially up here in the Highlands of Scotland. The environments around me have been the basis of most of my creative work to date, in my artwork and in my music.

Leaves that Fly – album by Kim Richards

A bit like everyone else, my life took a big turn in 2020. After 2 weeks of becoming a new mum, we were in lockdown. My environment became ever more important during this time, and it sparked a flurry of creativity. It also offered a rare chance to slow down a bit, and to build on ideas with time and with space in between.

I’ve always split my time between art and music and tried to find the right balance, all the way back to my time studying at The Glasgow School of Art. The thinking space during lockdown led me to the realisation that they don’t have to be separate for me, and I wanted to find a way to merge them together.

The Point and Fishing Boats (mixed media on canvas) – by Kim Richards

It was around this time that I realised if I wanted to pursue new creative projects and outlets, I needed to find a structure and set aside time for this, or life would fling me in different directions at full speed. I started thinking about the prospect of studying again as I liked the idea of having set timeframes and deadlines to work towards. Over the years, I had heard echoes of folk mentioning completing some or all of the modules on a course with a title that resonated with me – Music and the Environment. As I researched further, it was clear that the MA Music and the Environment course encapsulated so much of what I believe to be important for my own inspiration, and for my own creativity. Now, some might think it mad to begin a Masters Degree with pre-school children, but to me, it made perfect sense, and thankfully my patient husband supported me in this endeavour!

Being able to do the masters course part time has been a huge benefit for me, and having the adaptability of choosing how many modules per semester I can undertake. Due to having a busy workload outwith the course, I have not been able to attend all the scheduled tutorials, but these are recorded which has meant that it has been possible to keep up with important discussions and coursework.  I am now two years in and have just completed a module working on a collaborative project led by MA Music and the Environment Programme Leader Simon Bradley.

October feels like a long time ago now that I apprehensively clicked the button to join the Teams meeting to meet my fellow musical collaborators for the first time. The use of technology was a bonus for our group considering Gail lives across the water in Boston, Massachusetts, and Rob, resides near Newcastle. Thus, technology made otherwise impossible collaboration possible. Waldron (2013) argues that online collaboration promotes heightened metacognitive awareness because musicians must verbalise and justify their creative decisions more explicitly, and I believe the online setting strengthened my communication and collaboration skills as I had to articulate my musical ideas more clearly.  It was clear from early on that we were a diverse group in terms of our musical styles with Gail coming from a jazz background and Rob with his cross-over in jazz, folk and indie styles.

Our group was given a brief to produce a piece of music for The Scottish Wildlife Trust as part of their Sea the Connection initiative. Launched in 2024, Sea the Connection is a three year marine engagement project that aims to increase ocean literacy across Scotland. Some of its main aims are empowering communities to participate in marine decision making and policy conversations and raising awareness and connections to people’s relationship to the sea. As a group we discovered that composing a piece that highlighted both a maritime issue, a sense of connection and the beauty of the sea was at the forefront of our ideas.

A landmark moment in our collaboration came when we were asked to present our initial ideas to Elouise Dalziel, the Marine Policy Inclusion Officer of the Scottish Wildlife Trust. This gave us our first official deadline and spurred us on to start our creation of the music. The meeting with Elouise was very insightful and we gained more information to help us build on the theme of our composition. Some key takeaways from this meeting were that the initiative is keen to make marine policy accessible to all and to spark conversations. They particularly want to connect with Gaelic voices and get people connected with the sea in fun, engaging, joyful and meaningful ways. So we were keen to add elements of hope, and a sense of community and place to our piece.

I composed a Dm chord sequence in jig time as we thought this traditional Scottish edge might be more accessible to listeners in Scotland. Rob contacted David De La Haye to seek permission to use his underwater recordings of seals and other marine life as part of our project. This tied in well with the theme of the sea. Rob mixed the recordings together and this was the first time we heard the merging of our sounds. In order to reach Gaelic speakers and link the composition to Scottish culture, I thought adding a Gaelic refrain over the jig chords might work. I imagined giving a voice to all humans and creatures that use the sea. The lyrics that I kept coming back to were “Save our Sea” or “Save our Ocean”. In English, these lyrics could be portrayed as preachy and potentially cheesy, but in the Gaelic language the words “Saor an Cuan” (Save our Ocean) sound beautiful and add interest to the piece. I created a melody for the lyrics and added a harmony to create a sense of more than one voice.

When it came to the overall instrumentation and ‘sound’ of the piece, there were questions about how far we should move away from the traditional Scottish sound we should allow ourselves to go, especially from Gail and her husband, Lorenzo, who offered to add bass and vocals to the piece, with their operatic and jazz backgrounds. As our musical piece was about connections, journeys and a sense of togetherness, we were very keen for each style to come through. It also could contribute to the accessibility of the overall piece, thus reaching more people. We agreed that we would create a set of tunes starting with a jig into a reel. Gail created a chord sequence for the first part of the reel and these chords inspired my writing of the notes for the reel and a second part with chords. It wasn’t long before Gail recorded the tunes on the saxophone and Lorenzo added bass lines. It was the first time I had heard any tunes of mine played on a brass instrument. I found this part of the project really exciting as it started to feel like our group was starting to ‘play music together’. I gathered words and phrases that I thought linked with our theme and selected the most relevant to create a call and response element. I thought this would further emphasise the feel of connection to the sea as it likened that of a sea shanty. It also worked well within the themes of our group as it brought in more voices, almost creating the idea of people giving a voice on marine policy.

Rob nominated himself to do the mixing of our piece as he had the most experience of this being a mixing engineer and musician. He added wonderful rhythmic touches with his guitar, and mixed these with his own percussion playing and some provided by Gail.

Flexibility was a key element of our collaboration when juggling different time zones, work commitments and ideas. I learned that musical ideas improve by drafting, revisiting, and reshaping themes. This aligns with Schön’s (1983) concept of reflection-in-action that emphasises learning through ongoing experimentation and thoughtful adjustment. The process taught me that embracing uncertainty can lead to richer musical outcomes.

The lessons learned from this online musical collaboration, ranging from improved communication and technical preparation to adaptability, time management, and emotional awareness, will directly inform my future practice. These insights have deepened my understanding of what it means to collaborate musically in a digital space, equipping me with the skills and mindset needed for more effective and rewarding creative work.

The composition is called A Continuum Between Shores which I think encompasses the project and what we were trying to achieve to fulfil the brief. When I think back to October and my initial worries about working in a group entirely online, I feel much more positive about this way of working, as it seems that it does in fact work well. Working alongside musicians from different backgrounds and styles of music has enlightened me to new ways of thinking and made me feel more comfortable about working outside my comfort zone. I think our final piece has lots of interest and works as almost a triptych in structure. We have a variety of instruments running through it with flute, whistles, bass guitar, acoustic guitar, piano, and saxophone, to name a few! I have thoroughly enjoyed the experience of working alongside Simon and Elouise, and in musical collaboration with Rob and Gail. I am excited to work further with Rob and Gail on the piece in order to bring it on further to reach its full potential. Our collaboration and blending of creative perspectives have brought different influences, leading to new sounds that I could not have created alone.

I am fortunate to have the ability to undertake this course, and I am excited to begin the final stage – a personal project where I will develop my own musical and artistic composition in the form of an album and corresponding artwork, hopefully! I know that weighing up the decision to take the leap into further education can be challenging, but my experience has been extremely rewarding and satisfying, and I feel so much more equipped and inspired to pursue my creative endeavours.

www.kimrichards.co.uk

https://kimrichardsmusic.bandcamp.com/album/leaves-that-fly

MA Music and the Environment course

Enroll for January or September start, full time or part time.

References

Schön, D.A. (1983) The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action
[Online]. Available from:
https://raggeduniversity.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/1_x_Donald-A.-Schon-The-Reflective-Practitioner_-How-Professionals-Think-In-Action-Basic-Books-1984_redactedaa_compressed3.pdf

Scottish Wildlife Trust (n.d.). Sea the Connection [Website]. Available at:
https://scottishwildlifetrust.org.uk/our-work/our-projects/living-seas/sea-the-connection/

Waldron, J. (2013). ‘User-Generated Content, YouTube and Participatory Culture on the
Web: Music Learning and Teaching in Two Contrasting Online Communities’ [Online].
Available from:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14613808.2013.772131?needAccess=true#d1e323