Thursday 31st May 2012

Folk Festival. Cromarty Hall

Thursday night was the first night of the folk festival. Most of the concerts, events, sessions and gigs are based in Stromness which is normally a very quiet town but comes to life and really buzzes for the four days of the festival. There was a concert in The Hope that we wanted to go to and so we did not go to Stromness for the opening. The Hope concert was brilliant though. there were four groups on and all were good, including "Shoramere" a group of youngsters from Stromness Academy, who like "Hadhirgaan", their equivalent from Kirkwall Grammar School, really can not fail to impress anybody with the amount of musical talent up here and the quality of the music tuition that all the kids recieve.

 The highlight of the night though was a danish fiddler and his band, "The Harald Haugaard quartet". They were extremely good and very active, diving around the stage energetically as they were playin. Very infectious stuff.  

Being a true music fan, Pam's first comment was "phew, he's fit." , a feeling that was apparently shared by quite a few if the female members of the audience.                                                                                                                                        


I couldn't find a video of the quartet at the Orkney festival but this is one of the group at Edinburgh. His wife was not in Orkney as she is pregnant but her replacement was also very good.

Not to late of a night either. We were back home for just gone midnight so at least we will not be totally knackered before we start tomorrow.