North musicians combine talents and go on tour as dynamic duo

Pair to round up series of concerts with performances at ullapool and cromarty

By neil macphail

Published:

Anna Massie has many strings to her bow

Two north musicians already popular with audiences have formed a duo that is currently on tour.

Mairearad Green, from Achiltibuie, Wester Ross, and Anna Massie, from Fortrose, have been enjoying the tour, which ends at the Cromarty Old Brewery on Saturday, November 28.

Mairearad, on accordion and pipes, is one of Scotland’s finest musical exports, renowned for her deft and lyrical accordion style and her innovative compositions.

She wrote the music for the short film Sea of Glass, and many of her compositions are rapidly becoming popular session tunes.

Her piece Passing Places was hailed as “the best of this year’s New Voices series” at Celtic Connections 2009.

Anna started playing guitar at the age of seven, when her father returned from the Edinburgh Festival with an instrument bought at a car boot sale.

Throughout her teens Anna continued to play guitar, violin and mandolin. She joined her father's band, the Kerry Blues Ceilidh Band, in 1996, and spent almost every weekend playing at dances around the Highlands, gaining experience and developing her stagecraft and comfortable way with an audience.

She was the winner of the BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year 2003 Award and since has had a further array of nominations such as Best Instrumentalist at the 2005 and 2008 Scots Trad Music Awards. A talented multi-instrumentalist, she excels in playing the fiddle, mandolin and tenor banjo. As a duo, they play a storming set of original and traditional material, with a refreshing and cavalier style. They enjoy playing live, and they especially enjoy playing live together.

They play the MacPhail Centre, Ullapool, on Thursday, November 26, and Cromarty Old Brewery on Saturday, November 28.

Tickets for the Cromarty gig are £10, from 01381 600277.