Blas in the Highlands

15 Nov 2004 in Festival, Gaelic, Highland, Music

Spa Pavilion, Strathpeffer, 13 November 2004

THE NEWLY refurbished rafters of the Spa Pavilion must surely have felt that they were at last back at the heart of a truly vibrant Cultural Community. They were certainly ringing with the sounds of the best of Highland Music, in the concert ‘Blas’ – Gaelic for ‘taste’ or ‘relish’- the title of the new Festival of Highland Music.

The Macdonald Brothers (© Cailean Maclean)

This concert, organised by Féis Rois, was one of three designed to launch the Festival in the run up to Year of Highland Culture 2007. The events took place in Strathpeffer, Strontian and Clashmore, and if there was ever a night you wanted to be in three places at once, then this was it.

All three concerts were designed to showcase the cream of young Highland talent together with the ‘best known professional traditional musicians’, and to have a ’Ghaidhlig aig a cridhe’. There was certainly plenty of Gaelic in evidence in Strathpeffer. Colourful bilingual banners depicting the eye catching new logo for the Festival, designed by project manager Donna Cunningham, enhanced the stage set for the evening, which was started off with a swinging set of pipe tunes by the young pipers of the Féis Rois Ceilidh Trail, who toured as a group of 10 fabulous musicians and singers throughout Ross-shire earlier in the summer.

The Ceilidh trailers then gave an outstanding performance of tunes and Gaelic song, all the more outstanding when you realise that these young people have not met since the summer and came together for rehearsal only on Saturday afternoon – their training and professionalism very much in evidence through the level of communication between the players on stage.

“We look forward to many more exciting projects such as these concerts in the Festival which will grow now every year, until its culmination in 2007.”

Bean an Taighe for the evening was Uist born piper and singer Rona Lightfoot, now of Inverness, who kept the evening flowing along with her witty stories. She also gave the audience a chance to join her in some of her vast repertoire of Traditional Gaelic songs, learnt at the knee of her mother ‘Cèit Bean Eardsaidh Raghnaill’, who gave the Gaelic speaking world one of the best archive collections of Gaelic songs.

Another product of the Senior Féis Rois, the young group ‘The Tassle Bandits’ (so called because of the red-tasselled fiddles denoting pupils of Lochaber fiddle maestro, Angus Grant), winners of one of the much coveted Danny Kyle awards at Celtic Connections last year, gave a foot-stompin set of tunes which had the younger members of the audience, dancing in the aisles. Good luck to the lads with their gig at Celtic Connections in January.

The concert was rounded off in spectacular style with a performance which the world of music does not witness terribly often – the three Macdonald Brothers of Glenuig, playing together, demonstrating why they are regarded as being the absolute Best in the World of Piping. Even a non-piping aficionado could appreciate the exemplary musicianship from these three fine pipers and if the rafters were not birling before, they definitely were when the brothers invited all the pipers from the Ceilidh Trailers, the Bandits and Rona herself to join them for a wonderful final set of tunes.

The capacity audience could not have witnessed a better display of the talent we possess in the Highlands, from both young people and the more established performers, and it has to be said again that the future of Scottish Traditional Music looks very safe in the hands of these young musicians.

If the other two concerts making up the series ‘Blas’ were as good as this one – and here is absolutely no need to doubt this, with musicians such as Kathleen MacInnes, Mairead Stiubhart, Session A9 and the Anna Massie Band participating , then the new Blas Festival has had a very safe and trouble-free birth.

We look forward to many more exciting projects such as these concerts in the Festival which will grow now every year, until its culmination in 2007. It is to be hoped that the stunning Spa Pavilion will be the venue for many more events during the Festival.