It’s going to be an amazing night at the MG ALBA Scots Trad Music Awards on the 4th December 2022 in Caird Hall, Dundee. So many great performers and awards starting at 7pm. We would love to see you there. You can buy a ticket here.
One of our performers will be Fara. Read about them below.
The new decade marks an exciting new chapter for Scotland’s fabulous fiddle-led FARA, as founding Orkney frontwomen Jeana Leslie, Catriona Price and Kristan Harvey welcome young Highland pianist Rory Matheson to the line-up.
Having bid a fond farewell to original fourth member Jennifer Austin, who’s moved on to other projects, FARA recruited Matheson via the fabled folk scene in Glasgow, their shared adoptive hometown. With all three fiddlers being fast friends from childhood, Jeana explains, “We weren’t only looking for an excellent musician we could enjoy listening to, but just as importantly, someone willing to put up with us on a full-time basis. Then from speaking to friends and fellow musicians, Rory was the name that just kept coming up.”
A 2018 finalist in BBC Radio Scotland’s Young Traditional Musician of the Year, Matheson hails from the rich musical heartland of Scotland’s north-west coast, where he learned his craft through the world-renowned Fèis Rois youth programme. While studying at Glasgow’s prestigious Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (RCS), with top folk pianists Mary McCarthy and James Ross, he also began exploring jazz and blues, developing his distinctively diverse melodic, harmonic and rhythmic palette on both standard piano and digital Nord model.
The fiddlers’ ensuing collective sweep of top UK new-talent trophies included Catriona’s Dewar Arts Award, a Young Traditional Musician of the Year title for Kristan (who’s also a member of Blazin’ Fiddles) and Jeana’s Radio 2 Young Folk Award, in her duo with singer Siobhan Miller. Individual guest and session gigs, meanwhile, ranged from Belle and Sebastian to Nicola Benedetti, alongside periodic joint excursions back home, as riotous reinforcement to mighty Orcadian folk-rockers The Chair. The first formative threads of FARA’s rich sonic skein were thus already being spun.
Find out more about Fara
Bands performing on Sunday 4th December include Elephant Sessions, Fara, Trip, Eryn Rae Trio, The Auldeners, Gordon Shand Scottish Dance Band, Irish Minstrels, Tayside Young Fiddlers, and a James Alexander Tribute. If you can’t make it along to Dundee, you can watch the show from 9pm GMT in the UK on BBC iPlayer or internationally at www.bbc.co.uk/bbcalba