The Braemar Folk Festival has been shortlisted as a finalist in the MG ALBA Scots Trad Music Awards 2022.
The Festival, which featured Dougie MacLean as its headline act this year, has been nominated as ‘Event of the Year’, sponsored by VisitScotland.
The 20th edition of the Trad Awards will be held at Dundee’s Caird Hall on Sunday, December 4 and the public can now vote for their favourite act or organisation to scoop the top prizes at scotstradmusicawards.com.
Braemar Folk Festival was a lockdown brainwave to fill the Deeside village with music and celebrate the very best of folk and trad music talent at the start of October each year.
In just its second year running, the festival has played host to folk legends like Peggy Seeger, Dougie MacLean and McGoldrick, McCusker and Doyle, besides platforming the best of new folk talents such as Project Smok, BBC Young Trad Musician of the Year Finalists Eryn Rae and Michael Biggins and Northern Irish singer-songwriter Joshua Burnside.
The festival is centred on St Margaret’s Braemar, an A-listed former church finding a new lease of life as a performance and arts venue.
Besides the Main Stage concerts at St Margaret’s, there are informal jam sessions in the villages several pubs, workshops throughout the village and live music taking place from breakfast time ’til the wee small hours. Planning is already underway for the next Braemar Folk Festival, being held from 6-8 October 2023.
Commenting on the announcement of their place in the finals, festival organiser Fergus Mutch said:
“We are absolutely delighted to be nominated as Event of the Year in this year’s Trad Awards.
“It’s a testament to our dedicated volunteers, enthusiastic audiences, the whole team at St Margaret’s Braemar and brilliant local partners and sponsors that an event in just its second year running is getting noticed far and wide.
“We’ve been very fortunate to secure some world-renowned performers, and we’re also absolutely committed to supporting new voices in trad music and home-grown talent from right here in Aberdeenshire.
“The great thing about the Braemar Folk Festival is that from the moment people arrive in the village, until the minute they leave there’s live music for three days solid — concerts, workshops for all ages, jam sessions, impromptu tunes in pubs, cafes and any space available.
“We’re very proud to have established a great, cosy, autumn music festival — right in the heart of the Cairngorms — which is going from strength to strength and will be back even bigger and better for 2023.”