Music review: BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year Final
BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year Final ****
City Halls, Glasgow
Making an impression at the awards can take interesting forms: Paisley accordionist Grant McFarlane defused his first-competitor-on situation with the see-you-Jimmy tactic of distributing garish wigs around the audience; piper Dougie McCance, as befits an alumnus of the Red Hot Chilli Pipers academy of piping, performed with shamelessly gallus swagger.
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Hide AdElla Munro from Skye pinned her feminist colours to the mast with her opening, Burnsian What Can a Young Lassie Dae Wi’ an Auld Man, while Gaelic singer Kim Carnie from Oban sang with velvet-voiced authority, for one number dispensing with the stalwart house trio of pianist Jennifer Austin, guitarist Mike Bryan and percussionist Iain Sandilands. And from the ballad-rich North-East, Huntly’s Iona Fyfe performed bothy ballads and muckle sangs with confidence and clarity.
The coveted title has been a springboard for the careers of numerous musicians – not least the 2016 winner, concertina player Mohsen Amini, who returned to deliver a high-powered set with fiddler Tomas Callister and Adam Rhodes on bouzouki, managing to sound as if there’s been no holding him since this time last year.