Orkney Folk Festival – Stromness Town Hall – May 24, 2025
Written by celtic music radio on May 31, 2025
This was my second multi-artist concert in Stromness Town Hall, and also a second, and most welcome, encounter with The Maes – of whom, more later.
First up was an Orkney/Shetland ensemble, The Skirlies, comprising, on fiddles, sisters Bryony MacGregor and Jennifer Stevenson and Karen Shearer, with Mariann Allan on piano. They evolved out of the Orkney and Shetland instrumental aficionado scene through organisations like Orkney Traditional Music Project and Shetland Young Heritage.
They gave a fine opening set of traditional reels and jigs, and displayed tremendous ability and confidence. Given their line-up, and a fine selection of foot-tappers, I was forcibly reminded of Orkney superstars Fara. Who knows? Maybe, in a few years, they’ll be headliners too. They certainly have the chops to play with the best.
Next was Belt Hid Oot! – Stromness Academy’s answer to Kirkwall’s better-known Hadhirgaan. Essentially a fiddle-based school band, they reminded me, as did the Kirkwall ensemble last year, of the incredibly high standard of instrumental teaching in the islands. After a slightly nervous start, they soon found their feet and had appreciative feet tapping and hands clapping along. A high point for me – as a singer – was a lovely vocal harmony piece by three young teenage vocalists who were most impressive.
Malin Lewis is an award-winning piper, fiddler, composer and instrument-maker whose background lies in Moidart and Skye. With Malin onstage were Edinburgh-born fiddler Sally Simpson – playing up a storm and whose CV includes working with folk quartet folky quartet Westward the Light and touring with Sting’s musical ‘The Last Ship’, and, on guitar, her Westward the Light bandmate Orkney’s own Owen Sinclair doing a fine job as a last-minute stand-in for Ali Hutton.
All four elements in their set were Malin’s own compositions, some so new they lacked names, e.g. their opening “A Reel”. The nomenclature, however, wasn’t as important as the music, which was absolutely splendid.
A highlight for me was Malin playing a set of home-made smallpipes featuring a Lindsay System chanter – an extended-range instrument which Malin had used to supply incidental music for the 2024 film The Outrun starring Saoirse Ronan. As well as taking full advantage of the extra musical space afforded by these pipes, Malin made very skilful and effective use of portamento, sliding smoothly and continuously from note to note in a set of two tunes that displayed considerable emotional investment on the player’s part: Hiraeth – named for the Welsh concept of nostalgia for what might never have been, and Trans, referring to their own gender identity. Brilliant playing by Malin, Sally, and Owen, and much appreciated by an enthusiastic audience.
Which brings us to The Maes. I’d been mightily impressed by sisters, Maggie and Elsie Rigby, and their talented bass player Isaac Gunnoo at the Songwriters in the Round show the previous afternoon, and was looking forward to great things. I was not to be disappointed. Not only are their harmonies reminiscent of the McGarrigle sisters at their best, but the dynamics, light and shade, that those harmonies carry reminded me of the swelling chorales of Brian Wilson on such numbers as Good Vibrations.
Given the need for brevity in a review such as this, from a thoroughly enjoyable set, I’d have to pick a couple that went above and beyond in terms of melody and emotion. Writer of Love Songs was a beautifully tuneful piece of philosophy that posed the question “Do doomed-to-fail relationships go hand-in-hand with a writer’s ability to produce broken-hearted love songs?”
That was the opener, and I also was hit hard by the closer. Pete Seeger’s Healing River really showed off the harmonies to great advantage on an already evocative song whose depth of feeling was boosted by the presence of another family voice. Maggie’s and Elsie’s mum, who’d come all the way from Melbourne to see them at the Orkney Folk Festival, joined them onstage and you could have cut the emotional atmosphere with a knife. Cue standing ovation.
Finishing off the afternoon’s entertainment, Irish singer and bouzouki player Daoirí Farrell, winner of two BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, took the stage along with uilleann piper Mark Redmond and bodhran player Niall Preston. I have to say that Daorí has an amazing voice, in strength, tone, and vocal range – which put new, unexpected life into old session standards like The Galway Shawl.
Just as good as the voice, however, are the rambling surreal narratives in between songs that had the audience in hysterics. Given that the other members of his Trio were also clutching their sides, I can only conclude that, like our own Billy Connolly, he extemporises anew at every performance.
The humour wasn’t just reserved for the patter though. The darkly comic Tippin’ It Up to Nancy had me wiping tears of laughter away. The song seguéd into an astonishing bodhran solo by Niall Preston and was sent on its way by Mark Redmond’s perfect piping.
For the finale, the aforementioned Galway Shawl, Daorí had The Maes join his Trio to make an already rich sound into a tidal wave of musical joy. As we say here in Glasgow: pure dead brilliant!
BOB LESLIE
