Ross Couper and Tom Oakes have found themselves in great demand as a duo performing sell-out tours of the UK, Norway and Denmark. They also played one of the biggest folk festivals in Europe this year, the fabulous Tønder Festival. They have been playing together for a couple of years or so now and received a Scots trad award nomination in 2011. Ross Couper hails from Voe in Shetland Islands, an incredible fiddle player whose explosive talents lie at the heart of some of the finest Scottish acts on the music scene including Bodega and the Peatbog Faeries. It’s in the blood, his mother Margaret Scollay is a well known fiddle player and she is at least the third generation of fiddlers on her father’s side. She created a number of out-of-school fiddle groups, the most well known being ‘High Strings’who released three albums has had the likes of Andrew Gifford of Fiddlers Bid and Jenna Reid, Bethany Reid and Gemma Wilson all of Filksa amongst its memebers. Ross now resides in Edinburgh where Tom Oakes also now lives.
Tom (Auvo Quarter, Luke Daniels), is originally from Devon, he is a flautist and guitarist and is currently principle Flute teacher at Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. His inventive percussive playing style on the nylon stringed guitar has led to him being a much sought after leading accompanist on the British folk scene (Bodega, Damien Barber), he basis his style of playing on some of the great guitar players of the southwest of Ireland.
They play Edinburgh Folk Club today (Wednesday 19th September 2012).
Just watch them performing at this year’s Shetland Folk Festival:
They have a new website coming soon, keep an ear out for these two!