Tony McManus is a guitarist from Paisley, Scotland who plays finger-style acoustic guitar arrangements of tunes from Celtic music, classical music, and other genres. McManus emigrated from Scotland to Canada in 2003.
Old-time music is a genre of North American folk music. It developed along with various North American folk dances, such as square dancing, clogging, and buck dancing. It is played on acoustic instruments, generally centering on a combination of fiddle and plucked string instruments, most often the banjo, guitar, and mandolin. The genre is considered a precursor to modern country music.
Battlefield Band were a Scottish traditional music group. Founded in Glasgow in 1969, they have released over 30 albums and undergone many changes of lineup. As of 2010, none of the original founders remain in the band.
A strathspey is a type of dance tune in 4
4 time, featuring dotted rhythms, which in traditional playing are generally somewhat exaggerated rhythmically. Examples of strathspeys are the songs "The Bonnie Banks o' Loch Lomond" and "Coming Through the Rye".
Natalie MacMaster is a Canadian fiddler from Troy, Inverness County, Nova Scotia who plays Cape Breton fiddle music. MacMaster has toured with the Chieftains, Faith Hill, Carlos Santana, and Alison Krauss, and has recorded with Yo-Yo Ma. She has appeared at the Celtic Colours festival in Cape Breton, Celtic Connections in Scotland, and MerleFest in the United States.
The Clutha were a traditional Scottish band hailing from Glasgow, that released a small number of albums in the 1970s. The line-up on the Clutha's first album, Scotia (1971), was John Eaglesham, Erlend Voy, Calum Allan (fiddle), Ronnie Alexander and Gordeanna McCulloch (vocals). The same band members are credited on their 1974 album, Scots Ballads Songs & Dance Tunes. By the time of their 1977 release, The Bonnie Mill Dams, Jimmy Anderson had joined the group on chamber pipes and bagpipes, and Eaglesham had left the group.
Cape Breton fiddling is a regional violin style which falls within the Celtic music idiom. Cape Breton Island's fiddle music was brought to North America by Scottish immigrants during the Highland Clearances. These Scottish immigrants were primarily from Gaelic-speaking regions in the Scottish Highlands and the Outer Hebrides. Although fiddling has changed considerably since this time in Scotland, it is widely held that the tradition of Scottish fiddle music has been better preserved in Cape Breton.
The Old Swan Band is a long-established and influential English country dance band.
Alasdair Fraser is a Scottish fiddler, composer, performer and recording artist.
Scottish fiddling may be distinguished from other folk fiddling styles by its particular precision of execution and energy in the delivery, for example, the rendering of the dotted-quaver/semi-quaver rhythmic patterns, commonly used in the Strathspey. Christine Martin, in her Traditional Scottish Fiddling players guide, discusses the techniques of "hack bowing", "the Scotch snap", and "snap bowing". These techniques contrast quite sharply with the most common bowing patterns of Irish fiddling. The style has a very large repertoire consisting of a great variation of rhythms and key signatures. There is also a strong link to the playing of traditional Scottish bagpipes which is better known throughout the world.
The Scots Trad Music Awards or Na Trads were founded in 2003 by Simon Thoumire to celebrate Scotland's traditional music in all its forms and create a high profile opportunity to bring the music and music industry into the spotlight of media and public attention. Nominations are made by the public and in 2019 over 100,000 public votes were expected across 18 categories.
Mouth Music is a Scottish-inspired musical project founded in 1988, whose combination of traditional Gaelic songs and music with contemporary instrumental and technological settings led them to international fame in the early 1990s.
Talitha MacKenzie is a Scottish-American world music recording artist, and historical dance and music teacher and performer. Initially known as a vocalist in the original duo Mouth Music, she has maintained a solo career. Although most associated with Celtic and Gaelic music, she performs a wide range of early music and dance, as well as her own compositions.
Shona Le Mottee is a Canadian celtic/pop fiddler and vocalist who previously lived in Vancouver, British Columbia. In 2019 she relocated to Glasgow, Scotland.
Laura Risk is a California-born violinist. She specializes in performing and teaching the diverse fiddle repertoire of Scotland and Quebec.
Hanneke Jewel Cassel is an American folk violinist. She was raised in Oregon and graduated with a Bachelor of Music in Violin Performance at Berklee College of Music in 2000. Hanneke is the 1997 United States National Scottish Fiddle Champion, and she has performed and taught across the United States, Scotland, Sweden, China, New Zealand, France, England, and Australia.
Alasdair White is a Scottish folk musician born in 1983 on the Isle of Lewis, Outer Hebrides, Scotland. In 2001, when he was only 18 years old, he joined Battlefield Band as a virtuoso fiddle player.
Natalie Haas is an American cellist, originally from Menlo Park, California. A graduate of the Juilliard School, she has toured and recorded extensively with Scottish fiddler Alasdair Fraser. Also, she has toured and recorded with Mark O'Connor and his Appalachia Waltz Trio, and with Natalie MacMaster. She has appeared on more than 100 albums.
Joy Dunlop is a Scottish broadcaster, singer, step dancer and educator from the village of Connel in Argyll, who now lives in Glasgow, Scotland. Singing predominantly in Scottish Gaelic, she performs folk music, song and dance in a contemporary style rooted in the tradition. She is a weather presenter for BBC Scotland and BBC ALBA and formerly a volunteer radio presenter with Oban FM
Mairi Campbell is a Scottish folk singer and musician. Campbell's songs and music have a rooted and powerful quality that range from the everyday to the universal, both in sound and subject matter.
