Friday 1st June 2012

Another musical day. So far, so good

 An afternoon concert in The Reel in Kirkwall today. A bit more relaxing than last night but good nevertheless. Two acts, both orcadian. A young 14 year old girl, Emily Bourn who shot to prominance last year when she was asupporting act in a Matt Cardle concert in Kirkwall. She got rave reviews and was much more talked about than was the supposed star of the show. She writes all her own songs and has areally sweet and accurate voice. I would not be surprised if we hear a lot more of her in future years. At 14 years old, she has plenty of time to develop yet.

Having praised her so highly, I must say that though she was good, her music is not my favourite. I think that she will do well with good quality pop music.

The othere group, "Redd", are three Orcadians who now live in Scotland. As seems almost inevitable, when they were at Kirkwall Grammar School, they were all members of "Hadhirgaan". Hadhirgaan and their teacher Douglas Montgomery, must be responsible for a huge proportion of the musicians in Orkney. Douglas narrowly failed to win the award for the best music teacher in Scotland at last years celtic connection festival in Glasgow. He of course lives on Burray where all the best people live.
http://soundcloud.com/reddfolk/strathspey-and-reel

I couldn't find any videos of Redd so the above is a link to some of their music including one track with Kris Drever.



In the evening it was the Finstown Ceilidh and again a much different but very good "line up".

For a change, the highlight was a Yorkshire lass called Edwina Hayes. She has a beautiful voice when she can stop talking, although having said that, her patter was all part of her act. She now spends half of her time living in Nashville which must be a bit of a change from Yorkshire.

The clip is of her singing part of the soundtrack to a film called "My Sister's Keeper" which Pam tells me we have on DVD but it is on loan to Helen at the moment.
 Although it is, I think, a bit of a weepy, from the clip with the song, it looks well made so I will have to watch it when it comes back.
Among other good bands at the ceilidh were Hullion who are loosely based on several of the musicians who play regularly at "The Reel" and "The foundry bar band" who apparently have a combined age of over 500 years. One member of the band gave everyone a bit of a turn when he stumbled while coming on stage. We all thought that they may be playing with one less member. They play traditional scottish dance music very reminiscent of "the White Heather Club" that I can vaguely remember my aunty Bet watching on an old 12 inch black and white telly when I was a kid. Not really my sort of musis but they were good fun.