Braemar Folk Festival

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St Margaret's
Glenshee Road
Braemar
AB35 5YP

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Kinnaris Quintet & Beth Malcolm Trio

Kinnaris Quintet

An uplifting powerhouse of acoustic music bringing together three of Scotland's finest dynamic fiddle players Laura Wilkie, Aileen Reid and Fiona Macaskill (Niteworks), Laura-Beth Salter on mandolin and Jenn Butterworth on guitar.

Winners of the 2019 Belhaven Bursary for Innovation in Music, their acclaimed performances include fresh, new music from their eagerly anticipated second album, 'This Too' which has received raving reviews.

Expect uplifting, highly emotive, euphoric traditional music, with delicate sparkles of Bluegrass, Scandinavian, Appalachian, and Classical influences.

Beth Malcolm

Beth Malcolm has one of those distinct voices that feel like a breathe of fresh air, extremely well versed in the tradition with acclaimed vocalists in the family, Beth manages to combine this with her various contemporary music experiences (including collaborations with multi-award winning jazz outfit Fat Suit) to produce a truly unique sound. Her brand new 2023 album Kissd and Cryd is a joyful listen from start to finish and featuring some of Scotland’s finest musicians.

Beth will be performing at Braemar alongside Michael Biggins on piano (BBC Young Traditional Musician of the Year 2021) and Callum Convoy on Bodhran (Canny Band)

Elephant Sessions & Low Light Listening Lounge

Elephant Sessions

Creating a progressive blend of intricate tunes, engulfing guitars, with a bass and drum heavy backline, the Elephant Sessions’ music combines the very best of trad, funk and electronica and dance music.
Renowned for their breath-taking live shows the Elephant Sessions have made huge live appearances at some of the most notable venues and prestigious festivals across the U.K, Europe and Australia, including Glastonbury, Byron Bay Bluesfest, Colours of Ostrava and multiple headline sell-outs at Celtic Connections.

Low Light Listening Lounge

Combining raw vocals with crunchy fresh riffs Low Light Listening Lounge are an exciting emerging band on the Glasgow Indie Rock scene. Ewen White and Alasdair Mackenzie’s musical understanding is one formed in growing up playing music together in the Scottish Highlands.
With some tracks soaked in lush synth lines and driven by punchy guitars and Bass, to others utilising simple and intimate acoustics woven between delicate, dynamic string arrangements (courtesy of Laura Wilkie), LLLL’s music spans a wide spectrum of musical tastes. The band draw on inspiration from the likes of Frightened Rabbit, The National, Sharon Van Etten, Bon Iver, The War On Drugs, Bombay Bicycle Club, HAIM and Vampire Weekend among many others.

Please note: this will be a standing concert.

Rachel Sermanni Band

“Think Joni Mitchell meets Lisa Hannigan, with a delectably eccentric Scottish twist” The Guardian
“Beautifully honest…sweetly poetic in its lyricism yet deadly accurate in arrangement” Clash

Hailing from the Scottish highlands, Rachel Sermanni is an enchanting singer-songwriter,
whose performance and lyrics draw from a deep well of mysticism, dreams, nature and the simple-complex experience of being human. A contemporary folk musician influenced by a wealth of genres including jazz, rock, old-time and traditional.

Rightly described by critics as a “Folk noir gem” (MOJO), “Stately, poetic” (CLASH) and
“Folk of the Highest Order” (Time Out), Rachel Sermanni has been making music for over a decade and has developed her artistic voice over her many releases, each time pushing
boundaries and experimenting with different musical textures while maintaining the raw
emotional connection, to herself and others, that defines her music. Rachel Sermanni has toured the globe, played alongside artists such as Mumford & Sons, Fink, Ron Sexsmith, John Grant, The Staves, Karine Polwart, The Maes and many more at venues and festivals all over. She also runs a songwriting workshop called Cultivating A Creative Life and her podcast, Rachel Sermanni’s Finger That Points To The Moon, similarly explores her relationship to creativity and inspiration, with the hope that it will help point in the direction of truth for herself and those listening.

Brighde Chaimbeul and Aidan O Rourke

Pipes and voice are at the heart of the Gaelic tradition – in Gaelic, the phrase ‘to play the pipes’ translates as ‘singing the pipes’. Brìghde Chaimbeul and Aidan O’Rourke both have a gift of playing instrumental music in a way that really sings. They ditch excess, don’t bother with anything gratuitously flash. Instead they tap into the most stripped-back, visceral and lyrical voices of their instruments.
Winner of the Horizon Award at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards 2019 – Brìghde Chaimbeul is one of Scotland’s fastest rising stars. A native Gaelic speaker, her style is rooted in her indigenous language and culture, but draws inspiration from a variety of piping traditions such as from Cape Breton, Eastern Europe and Ireland.

Her debut album The Reeling has had an extraordinary response since its launch at a sold-out Celtic Connections show at the start of 2019. She was joined on the recording by violinist Aidan O’Rourke from experimental folk trio Lau, who also produced the album (and whom performs alongside her at some of her live appearances), Radie Peat from the Dublin band Lankum on concertina, and the pioneering 82-year-old singer and piper Rona Lightfoot contributing canntaireachd (a phonetic singing tradition used to teach pipe tunes – the word means ‘chanting’ in Gaelic).

Working closely with Aidan O’Rourke, Brìghde has devised a completely new way of arranging for pipe music that emphasises the rich textural drones of the smallpipes; the constancy of sound that creates a trance-like quality in the tunes. She has collaborated with many established artists over the years, including Ross Ainslie, John McSherry, Paul Meehan, Aidan O’Rourke, Carlos Nunez, Martin Green, Allan MacDonald.

Braemar Folk Festival sponsored by Balmoral Group.

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