
The full programme for the 40th anniversary Orkney Folk Festival has just been announced, with 48 acts from around the world set to converge upon Stromness, in Orkney’s west mainland, over May 25-28.
Leading artists from the USA, Canada, Norway, Sweden, Ireland, England, Wales and throughout Scotland will join 28 home-grown Orcadian artists at the festival.
A total of 47 events in 18 venues across the county form the landmark anniversary programme – including concerts, ceilidhs, clubs, workshops and family events. Whilst more than half of all events will take place in the festival’s hometown of Stromness, festival shows will also take place in Birsay, Finstown, Harray, Kirkwall, Orphir, Sanday, Sandwick, St Margaret’s Hope, Stenness and Tankerness. Two long-term supporters of the festival, Highland Park and Swannay Brewery, will also open their visitor centre doors to festival gigs for the first time in the 40th anniversary.
Globally renowned Scottish folk group Capercaillie will return to the festival on Friday 26 May, having first appeared in the county at the fourth Orkney Folk Festival, in 1986. They will be joined in an unprecedented collaboration with a local orchestra, headed up...