A traditional north-east music group will be hanging up its harps, fiddles and bagpipes for the final time this year after one last hurrah for the Aberdeen International Youth Festival (AIYF).
Established in 2006, the Ceol Mor big band fuses contemporary genres such as jazz and funk with the rich folk heritage of the Granite City and Aberdeenshire.
It was originally set up to offer young musicians aged between 16 and 25 living in the region the opportunity to learn about and develop the skills to play old style Scottish tunes, and be engaging at the same time.
Over time the festival has also developed programmes to teach younger children about the joy of traditional ballads.
And now, after 10 years of playing together, Ceol Mor will cease to be in its current form, but the ensemble’s director Dave Francis hopes that a new project will rise from its ashes at some point in the near future.
Mr Francis, who helped create the arrangement of Auld Lang Syne that was used in the first Sex and the City film, said: “This will be my last year as the director of Ceol Mor as it is.
“I’ve been the director since the beginning, so I’ve seen it through all of its different changes and phases all the years.
“My hope is that were will continue to be a traditional music element in the youth festival, but at the moment I’m not sure what form it will take.
“But it’s been a fantastic ten years. There are a lot of young people who have been through Ceol Mor and are now making their living as professional musicians, a number of them are quite prominent on the scene.”
Ceol Mor will play their last show for AIYF at the Lemon Tree tonight at 8.30pm. Tickets are £9, with concessions costing £6.
Mr Francis continued: “When we first started off with the project it was an attempt to make a connection between the youth festival and the traditional culture of the north-east of Scotland.
“When we first began the emphasis was on that, but it’s kind of changed over the years.
“But for this final year we’ve brought it back on this traditional emphasis, it’s back to its roots, with bothy ballads, fiddle tunes, completely a north-east focus, to take us full circle.”
For more information visit www.aiyf.org