Various venues, Orkney, 26-29 May 2011

IT’S a given that there is music pulsating from every nook and cranny in Stromness for nearly four days at the Orkney Folk Festival, but this year the pace was frenetic with artists lining up for – and sometimes giving up trying for – a coveted seat at the sessions in the pubs.

Part of the reason for the chair shortage was the foul weather which prevented the normal jamming in the street, but with a record 30 ticketed concerts and many well-known unbooked names turning up just for the craic, there was high demand.

One visiting box player refused to leave the spot she had perched on for three days in the Ferry Inn when the ‘official’ session band Da Fustra from Shetland needed space for a drum kit.

Session A9

The festival has moved away from a completely casual session scene with a programme of bands leading sessions, joined by friends and itinerant festival goers. Thus we were treated to the rampaging jigs and reels of Session A9, with fiddles ranged against syncopated piano; wound-up wind power from the Box Club’s full-on accordion players and high energy Daimh for stunning banjo, two pipers, fiddle, bodhran, mandola and vocals, some songs in Gaelic.

Yes, just going to the sessions alone was exhausting, and at one point the chandelier in the foyer below the foot-tappers in the Stromness Hotel was bouncing alarmingly. A most memorable moment was during Session A9’s Ferry Inn spot when 11-year-old Magnus Westwell picked up his trumpet for a solo of It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Aint’t Got That Swing) , stunning the loud drinking crowd at the bar into silence when word got round it was ‘just a peedie boy’ playing. His older brother and sister Jack, 15, and Amy, 18, wowed the audience with their fiddle and harp arrangements in the Harray Hall.

The Opening Concert on Thursday night in Stromness Town Hall set a high standard that continued across the festival. Orkney’s own Kristan Harvey and Friends – BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year 2011 – received a huge welcome home, arranging some great quirky tunes with effortless playing and sublime vocals from Megan Henderson.

Kristan Harvey

More achingly beautiful vocals came from Emily Smith; her passion for collecting songs and composing resulting in evocative interpretations of a song penned by Robert Burns and more other long dead lyricists with her trademark contemporary voice twisting the sounds into something new and exciting.

At last Four Men and a Dog, part trad Irish and part any genre they like playing, made it to Orkney from Ireland with four all-too-short sets which left us all shouting for more. So much so that I went to all four gigs they appeared at – and they only play a few times a year. Lucky me.

Four Men and a Dog

Gerry O’Connor’s high energy and technically perfect banjo playing and Cathal Hayden’s scorching fiddle led the traditional Irish tunes, while Donal Murphy’s wizardry on the box showcased polkas he learned from his father at home in Limerick. O’Connor slowed down the pace and played his hauntingly beautiful fiddle tribute to his late father-in-law, the moving and eloquent Song for PJ.

Songwriter, guitarist and vocalist Kevin Doherty told us how he attempted to write a song inspired by James Joyce’s Ulysses but unfortunately it was six hours long. We got the four minute version of Bloomsday, and we could have managed a little bit longer.

Doherty’s slowed down version of Dylan’s Twist of Fate was a brief but enjoyable change of pace again from the band’s dazzling energy. Gino Lupari, the cuddly ultimate showman on bodhran and vocals, was a huge talent with his rendition of The Shape I’m In and his comic patter was appreciated. They were just blazing when they oh so sadly ran out of time.

There was time for raffles at the main events – Orkney’s popular pastime. Murphy told of how he had won the Stromness football club raffle in 2000 and when he got home to Ireland there was a cheque waiting for him.

Elsewhere I caught Habbadam, Danish fiddle, vocals, sax and guitar. Impressively the two lasses stepped off a plane at 7.30pm and were on stage at eight, regaling us with tales of what they had learned about Orkney in the car and weaving anecdotes into their set of Danish/Scandinavian folk tunes and songs.

Another festival highlight was the concert put together by Orkney fiddler Douglas Montgomery – Orkney Folk:The Gathering. So much so that a rare standing ovation thundered through Stromness Town Hall. Underpinning the gathering of Orkney folk was Montgomery with his Saltfishforty partner Brian Cromarty (guitar and mandola) and Orcadian-born folk superstar Kris Drever on double bass and guitar.

The aforementioned Kristan Harvey was in on the act, along with most of the members of The Chair, accordionist Billy Peace, songman and compere Billy Jolly, pianist Jennifer Austin, the Song Shop Trio adding lyrical harmonies and young fiddlers Shoramere with Diana Kelday.

The Chair

Stirring polkas gave way to the beautiful song with Orkney connections, The Bride’s Lament, Kris Drever’s Sweet Honey in the Rock and The Creelman which featured all of the musicians, including 16 fiddlers. The concert was filmed and recorded for a Scotland’s Islands-funded project to celebrate Orkney talent, including exports, to promote it further afield. A CD and visits by the house band to other festivals is planned.

There were loads more visiting acts and other Orkney folk, including Fiona Driver and Graham Simpson, Duncan McLean and the Driftwood Cowboys, Jo Philby, Stronsay Siver Darlings, Eric Linklater and David Delday and brothers James and Jack Watson playing in the hub of Stromness, and further afield across parishes and the isles.

An inter-tunety play-off between Orkney’s The Chair and Shetland’s Fullsceilidh Spelemannslag saw the Shelties settle an old score by winning after losing out at Shetland Folk festival last year, as the audience danced at the Academy Club.

Of course, the sun came out just as everyone was leaving.

© Catherine Turnbull, 2011

Links

• Orkney Folk Festival