By all accounts, Sunday’s second Between Islandsconcert, carrying the theme into Orkney Folk Festival’s ever-evolving and justly celebrated annual showcase, The Gathering, was just as much as a triumph as Saturday’s, if not even more so. Extending the inter-island connections beyond Orkney, Shetland and the Hebrides and across the Atlantic, Cape Breton quartet Còig were especially… Read more »
We’ve definitely been missing our customary beautiful Orkney Folk Festival weather, with this prevailing rainy greyness showing the more contrary side to springtime in Scotland, testing revellers’ mettle even as it’s been welcomed by the farmers. Though at least yesterday’s relative climatic clemency saw a few brave souls playing tunes and quaffing outside, while the… Read more »
It’s getting to that stage of the game where day and night start blurring perilously into one another – partly thanks to seeing concerts at all hours of the afternoon and evening; partly to after-hours tunes continuing well into the morning, followed by going to bed in daylight. Even before a note of music was… Read more »
After a swift post-gig pint last night, it was hard to tear oneself away from a Stromness Hotel session featuring members of Kinnaris Quintet and The Poozies, but there was in fact only one place to be: the brand-new Festival Club, in the all-but unrecognisable main games hall of Stromness Community Centre. (The Kinnaris/Poozies merger,… Read more »
Last night’s Orkney Folk Festival pre-party – brought to you by a Highlands and Islands Airports industrial dispute – actually kicked off in Shetland, somewhere around 5pm, when around a dozen of those other islanders, who’d planned to fly today, boarded the good ship Hjaltland in Lerwick and headed immediately for the bar, where they remained ensconced for… Read more »
As the last pre-festival day ticks down towards tomorrow’s half-dozen opening concerts – featuring 22 different acts, and following four morning schools visits – one of the last quotable comments from our committee source, gleaned last night, was, “I wish we still had another week – or at least that it was still only midday… Read more »
It’s the start of festival week, and – as hundreds of musicians and music-lovers prepare to set course for Stromness, from most other points of the compass – the final countdown has begun for your dozen-strong, all-volunteer organising committee. Their last full pre-festival meeting takes place tonight – an occasion matter-of-factly summed up by one… Read more »
It told its own tale on Sunday, in Stromness, that all of the town’s ATMs had been completely emptied of cash, even after apparently capping withdrawals before they were wholly bled dry. Not that this foiled one enterprising gentleman in the Co-op around 8pm, who was evidently planning a thoroughly exhaustive last hurrah, as he… Read more »
For bookers and bands alike, there can be efficiencies gained when one musician features in two line-ups – but there can also be pitfalls, as was the case today for one such dual member of Gnoss and Trip, who respectively played this afternoon’s Sunday Supplement, at Stromness Town Hall, and the Sunday Best show in… Read more »
Yesterday afternoon’s Orkney Tipple concert at Quoyloo, featuring that inimitable musical chronicler Findlay Napier, wasn’t actually intended as proof that the Folk Festival can organise a knees-up in a brewery, but seemingly some audience members’ levels of merriment – even allowing for Findlay’s frequently side-splitting material – suggested they’d interpreted it as such, and were… Read more »
Musicians the world over are well-known for their somewhat scatterbrained tendencies, and yesterday yielded the 2018 festival’s first fruit of this proclivity. Having arrived at her home festival after completing an entire US tour without any such issues, Orkney’s own Kristan Harvey, of Fara fame, managed to get all the way out to Evie before… Read more »
The warmest of Orkney welcomes to one and all, visitors and locals both, as the county’s world renowned folk festival kicks off its 36th outing tonight, presenting the first six concerts – in Stromness, Stenness, Burray and Evie – from the weekend’s mouthwatering tally of 35 programmed events, including ceildhs, workshops, talks and free performances, in… Read more »
