25th February

SCOTT GARDINER is one of Scotland's top traditional singers and has been performing at concerts and festivals across the country since his schooldays. Brought up on a flatland farm in historic Forfarshire, he is best known for singing the bothy ballads and songs of the north-east. Career highlights include representing Scotland at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in the USA; winning the Bothy Ballad World Championship in Elgin; three nominations for Scots Singer of the Year at the BBC ALBA Scots Trad Music Awards and, along with guitarist Johnny Kemp, becoming the first man to get a Mexican wave going at Dunfermline Folk Club. He started off the year running the late night song club at Celtic Connections, followed by concerts in Dublin, Orkney, Angus, Aberdeen, Cornwall, London, Leicester and Inverness. And festivals in Girvan, Dorset, Orkney, Portsoy, Keith, Perthshire, Aberdeenshire, Kirriemuir, Devon and Findhorn.

25th March

HAMISH NAPIER is a Scottish folk multi-instrumentalist and composer from Grantown-on-Spey. He is inspired by the heritage and nature of his native landscape of Strathspey. His album The Woods explores the flora and fauna of Scotland's native forests. It won Album of the Year at the Scots Trad Music Awards and is the third album in his Strathspey Pentalogy - a ambitions project to produce 5-albums in celebration of his homeland, following on from the first two in the series, The River (for the river Spey) and The Railway (for the old Speyside railway line). Humorous, engaging and heart-warming, Hamish's performances often incorporate poems and stories about nature, folklore and communities.
JORDAN NEIL is an acclaimed bagpiper and guitarist from Aviemore, Scotland. Similarly to Hamish he attended Fèis Spè in his youth, and is very much in-demand as a musician in his native Badenoch & Strathspey, and the Inverness area. Jordan has worked alongside the Cairngorm Ceilidh Band and regularly plays in his folk duo Làirig. He attained a bachelor's degree in Applied Music at the University of the Highlands & Islands, studying under professional musicians Simon Bradley, Iain MacDonald (Glenuig), Matheu Watson and Anna-Wendy Stevenson. Jordan has a passion for the great outdoors and hillwalking and is a keen amateur landscape photographer.