Sound and Music

Orkney is full of music, traditional and up-to-date. All schoolchildren have lessons in keyboard, guitar and drums, very large numbers of children and adults learn to play the fiddle and accordion through the Traditional Music Project and children are encouraging to join the very popular pipe bands.

The St Magnus Festival in June has gone from strength to strength since it was founded by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies in 1977 and locals and visitors pack out the concerts of the Folk Festival in May. The rest of the time there are Strathspey and Reel concerts, rock gigs, pipe band concerts and folk evenings. If you can’t come and join us you can at least get a flavour with an Orkney CD.

There is a much greater tradition of story-telling in Orkney than music-making. Perhaps it’s something in the rich Orkney dialect and lilting accent that breeds and attracts novelists and poets. Even better than reading Orcadian poets is to hear Orcadians read them, as you can in this CD.