News

Girvan Folk Festival 2020 : 1st – 3rd May: The dates for Girvan Folk Festival in 2020 have been set and work is underway on planning and building on what was a very successful festival, our 45th, which took place in May.  Most of the information on the festival website currently still refers to our 2019 festival.  This guest list was very typical of ‘Girvan’ and 2020 promises to be similar with lots of great musical experiences from people firmly rooted in the tradition.  Many people see Girvan as a ‘meeting place’; a chance to see old friends and to rub shoulders with traditional musicians from all ‘airts and pairts’ and within our guests, and visitors, there will be lots of opportunities for people to share in performance for some unique experiences.  Many people attend Girvan year on year, confident that it will be a great weekend. We hope that you might start making your own arrangements to attend early. Meantime please register on our website for email news updates. This will help us to keep you in touch with any developments.

Girvan Folk Festival in cooperation with Culzean Castle is presenting a special concert as part of The Burns Festival Fringe. 

Burns and the Tradition: In the footsteps of Jean Redpath. Fiona Ross with Brian Miller Friday 10^th May, 7.30 – 9.30 pm.  Tickets £12.50
Culzean Castle, The Round Drawing Room

A very special evening of folk songs from the Scots song tradition. Robert Burns enriched the tradition through his extensive collecting of folk songs and his own writing. Fiona Ross is a Scots singer now living in Australia and Patron of the Melbourne Burns Club. Brian Miller is a singer and instrumentalist with huge experience and respect among folk musicians throughout Scotland.  Jean Redpath, who was Patron of the Burns Bicentenary Festival, performed in The Round Drawing Room at Culzean Castle in 1996 and this special concert brings scots songs to the heart of the Castle, following in Jean’s footsteps. Jean Redpath was a pioneer, who brought the songs of Scotland and of Burns to people throughout the world, and particularly in her adopted home in America. Brian Miller appeared with Jean on Scottish television and together with Fiona Ross is a skilled exponent of Scotland’s rich heritage of music and song. Culzean Castle and the surrounding countryside in Ayrshire is steeped in history and balladry and it the ideal setting for this very special evening.

Tickets for the concert also grants you evening access to Culzean and the Castle.  The evening will be recorded for Radio broadcast after the event.

More information: www.girvanfolkfestival.org.uk/culzeancastle 

Tickets from www.girvanfolkfestival.org.uk/tickets

Not sure how legible this will be, but this is a timetable for Buses serving the outlying villages for festival events. It will be printed in the Festival programme, but it would be good for advance planning if local people were aware of this facility. So if you know anyone this might be helpful to, please point it out to them.

Adam McNaughtan, The legendary Glasgow songwriter whose compositions include The Yellow On The Broom, The Jeely Piece Song, and Oor Hamlet yet again comes out of retirement to grace The Bobby Robb Tribute Concert which last year drew a Saturday afternoon packed house. Attenders are recommended to get along early for the best seats this year. Tickets for this concert are available on the Festival website. Best value is the Weekend Ticket, a Saturday Day Ticket will get you this concert plus other events that day including the evening concert with The Tannahill Weavers.

17 Apr, 2018, Gaiety Theatre, AYR. Tickets £10

The Girvan Traditional Folk Festival celebrates its 43rd year in style with an exclusive pre-festival taster session at The Gaiety featuring music from Maggie MacInnes, one of Scotland’s foremost Gaelic singers and clarsach players. In 2004 Maggie was voted Best Gaelic Singer of the Year in the BBC Scots Trad Music Awards. She comes from a long line of singers from the island of Barra in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland and has performed in various groups over the years such as Ossian, Fuaim, Eclipse First and The Maggie MacInnes Band, and this evening Maggie will perform with her musician son Calum Park. Also performing will be Eddie Seaman (pipes/whistles) and Luc McNally (guitar/vocals) – two of the five members of the young and talented band Barluath.  The 2018 Girvan Traditional Folk Festival runs from Friday 4th to Sunday 6th May.

Girvan Festival is now constituted as a Charity as part of our strategic plan. It won’t make any immediate differences but it makes sense to us in terms of governance and strategy.

Margaret Bennett will be presenting a talk on songs collected from a Newfoundland singer Jerome Downie.

Want to come to the Festival but put off by the cost of the ferry? Why not leave your car at Belfast or Larne and come over as a foot passenger? If you have bought a weekend ticket and are coming over by boat on the 4th May, we will meet you and transport you to Girvan. Transport will also be available to take you to the ferry on Monday. Contact us by email to register your interest.

GUESTS INCLUDE: The Tannahill Weavers; Len Graham & Jack Lynch; Rita Gallagher; Lori Watson Trio; George Duff, Kevin MacLeod, John Martin, Leo McCann; Nick Dow; Eddie Seaman & Luc McNally; Maggie MacInnes Trio; Margaret Bennett; Susan McClure; Aileen Carr; Haggerdash; Fàilte; The Barrstools; Suitcase Circus; Irma Helou; The Tattiehowkers Ceilidh Band.

The Tannahill Weavers – Over the years the Tannies have been trailblazers for Scottish music. In 2011 the band was inducted into the Scottish Traditional Music Hall of Fame, and in 2014 they were joined by innovative piper Lorne MacDougall. With their 50th anniversary in 2018, the Tannahill Weavers are firmly established as one of the premier groups on the concert stage. From reflective ballads to footstomping reels and jigs, the variety and range of the material they perform is matched only by their enthusiasm and lively Celtic spirits.

As a guitar-accompanied singer, he sounds startlingly like Nic Jones, unaccompanied, he’s really a good and interesting singer.

Nick Dow is an all-round professional folk singer and folklorist, singing and researching English and Irish traditional songs, taught and encouraged by traditional singers from Dorset and Lancashire as well as singers from the travelling people. He also builds and restores gypsy wagons. Nick is an acknowledged expert on West Country folk song. Together with his wife Mally, has collected over 300 songs in Dorset, and discovered singers in Lancashire & Essex. He has also made recordings of gypsy singers, some of which have been included on Topic Records ’The Voice of the People’. Nick has lived an amazing life, travelling half way round the world, living on the road with the travelling folk and learning their songs, working as a TV and Film Extra, broadcaster, Narrowboat painter, writer, Folklorist, Guitar Teacher General Dealer. Every song Nick sings has a story attached to it, and his gigs are as informative as they are entertaining.

This year’s Gradam for Amhránaí na Bliana (Singer of the Year 2017) goes to RITA GALLAGHER

Upon hearing this distinctive traditional singer, one is immediately aware one is listening to a vocalist of incredible ability. Her mastery of tone, breath, and ornamentation, coupled with her extensive knowledge and understanding of songs, from her native South Donegal and beyond, leave one in no doubt that one is truly in the presence of greatness. A three-time winner of the Comhaltas All-Ireland title for female singing in English, her extensive repertoire contains many exceptionally challenging songs, all of which she makes sound effortless.

See website for further details www.girvanfolkfestival.org.uk/guests/