Orcadian fiddle and mandolin player Graham Rorie is an award-winning folk musician based in Glasgow. A finalist in the 2021 BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year and graduate of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland’s Traditional Music Degree, Graham has been making a name for himself as a performer, composer, session musician and producer.

A founding member of quartet ‘Gnoss’, Graham has enjoyed festival appearances across Europe including Glasgow’s Celtic Connections, Festival Interceltique de Lorient (France) and Celtica Valle d’Aosta (Italy). The band have also been nominated for three MG Alba Scots Trad Music Awards including ‘Up and Coming Artist of the year 2017’ and ‘Album of the Year’ for their last two records, ‘Drawn From Deep Water’ (2019) and ‘The Light of The Moon’ (2021).

In his latest project, Graham brought together a selection of Glasgow based musicians to present a suite of newly-composed music inspired by his fellow Orcadians who travelled to northern Canada to work for the Hudson’s Bay Company during the 18th and 19th centuries. The premier of this new work took place at Celtic Connections 2020, with a sold-out headline show incorporating collaborations with Quebec’s Le Vent Du Nord. ‘The Orcadians of Hudson Bay’ was nominated for ‘Original Work of the Year’ at the Scots Trad Music Awards and was released in album form in May 2021.

An in-demand session musician, Graham has featured on fiddle and mandolin for albums by artists including the Red Hot Chilli Piper’s Dougie McCance, BBC Radio 2 Young Folk Award 2017 winners Josie Duncan and Pablo Lafuente, and 2018 MG Alba Scot’s Singer of the Year Iona Fyfe.

“Rorie, as well as catching the eye by playing fiddle right-handed and mandolin left- handed but upside down, writes tunes with an engaging twist and adds imaginative colour to arrangements that are smartly punctuated and crisply executed.” - Rob Adams, The Herald

"Rorie demonstrates great compositional versatility deeply rooted in traditional music.” - Su O’Brien, folking.com

"Her remarkably accomplished debut album, Namer Of Clouds, beguiles with its poetry and tenderness, and her eye for detail, vivid imagination and bright vocals make it a captivating listen. She is a talent to watch"​
      - The Guardian

Kitty Macfarlane is a songwriter and guitarist from Somerset, whose music is rich with visual imagery and written with an eco-eye. From the starling murmurations on the Somerset Levels to the lowly eel's epic transatlantic migration, and the small part we ourselves play in a much bigger picture, her songs are bound by the underlying theme of mankind's relationship with the wild. Kitty Macfarlane's highly anticipated debut album Namer Of Clouds, released September 2018 and produced by Sam Kelly and Jacob J Stoney, gathers inspiration from the sky to the seabed. Carried by a voice 'as clear as a mountain stream' (FRUK), her lyrics touch on intervention and rewilding, climate change and migration, and woman’s historical relationship with textiles and the land. The album is augmented by all kinds of ‘found sound’ recorded in locations from Somerset to Sardinia – birdsong, waterfalls, the click of knitting needles - and bookended by sounds of the wild. 

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Kitty was voted Female Artist of the Year 2018 by FATEA. Namer Of Clouds was included in The Guardian's Best Folk Albums of 2018, and nominated for Album Of The Year in the fRoots Critics Poll. Kitty released her first EP Tide & Time in 2016, after being shortlisted for the BBC Radio 2 Young Folk Award the year before, and has since toured with acclaimed folk duo Kathryn Roberts & Sean Lakeman, Blair Dunlop, and Elephant Sessions. She has received project funding from the English Folk Dance and Song Society, and more recently the Lynsey de Paul Prize for female songwriters.

She Annym possan noa, ta cur lesh troor dy chiaulleyderyn yl-ghreienagh voish Mannin ry-cheilley. She arraneyder Gaelgagh Cairistìona as cloieder feddan aghtal, chossyn ard-ghoo trooid goaill ayrn ayns shalee Alain Pennec “The Manxman” ec “Le Festival Interceltique de Lorient” nurree. Ta Isla Callister ny cloieder fiddyl aeg feer scheihoil ta cur lhee covingyssyn coraagh as e schleiyn chishtey kiaullee dys y phossan. T’ad lhieeney nyn giaull lesh bree as ‘annym’ y Ghael. 

Annym (‘soul’ in Manx Gaelic) is a newly formed group bringing together two musicians from the Isle of Man; Isla Callister (fiddle, vocals and concertina) and Cairistìona Dougherty (vocals and whistles). Having played together for several years for dance groups and other projects, including both being tutors for a youth movement project it was a natural progression for them to create their own music together. Cairistìona has been singing in Manx Gaelic since she was a child and gained renown in Lorient in 2015 when she took part in Alain Pennec’s creation ‘The Manxman’. Isla is in her second year studying Traditional Music at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, and has been making waves in Glasgow with her superb fiddle playing in new group, ‘TRIP’. Having both moved to Glasgow to study they have continued to create Manx music together. 

Accompanying them is acclaimed harper Rachel Hair. Through her work as visiting harp tutor for the Isle of Man Rachel has emerged as the world’s premiere specialist in Manx Harp Music. She is at the forefront of a revival of Manx harp and this has led to invitations to teach and perform Manx music worldwide.  

Sharing a passion for the music of the Isle of Man, these musicians naturally united whilst currently residing in Glasgow. With affection and commitment towards traditional Manx music, their sound is infused by the vitality and ‘annym’ of the Isle of Man.

Orcadian singer and guitarist based in Glasgow.

One quarter of Gnoss, one seventh of Manran.

Debut solo single 'Welcome' out April 17th.

Scottish Piper, Whistle player, Pianist, Composer and tutor based in Glasgow, Scotland
www.chrisgraymusic.com

Semi-finalist in both BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician 2016 & BBC Radio 2 Young Young Folk Award 2016.

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