It’s not long now until the fourth Button Boxes and Moothies festival of Free Reed Instruments at the Elphinstone Institute at the University of Aberdeen (6-8th November 2015).
The festival attracts musicians and enthusiasts from many parts of the UK and Ireland. This is a unique event and will bring together a splendid array of instrumentalists who play mouth organs, concertinas, melodeons, Jew’s harps, and diatonic button accordions. The perfect place, on an otherwise cold winter weekend, to enjoy a fantastic selection of music by some of the very best talents around, both from Scotland and further afield. There will be several opportunities to meet the artists and to take part in informal sessions which will be happening in local music-friendly pubs.
Organiser Frances Wilkins says, ‘Festival-goers will have the chance to find out more about the instruments and their music and to take part in workshops, sessions and ceilidhs. Workshops cater for all abilities, whether you are a complete beginner or an experienced player’. Co-organiser Ian Russell adds, ‘‘There will be some wonderful musicians around for the weekend, travelling here from as far away as the south of France, Ireland and England’.
To launch the festival the Elphinstone Institute will be hosting an academic study day, with keynote lecture from Northumbrian concertina maestro Alistair Anderson, on Friday 6th November. Sponsored by the British Forum of Ethnomusicology, the study day aims to bring to light to some of the groundbreaking research taking place into free reed instruments.
Invited artists this year include:
Alistair Anderson (Northumberland, England)
Wendy Stewart (Edinburgh, Scotland)
Mary MacNamara (Co. Clare, Ireland)
Rósín Broderick (Co. Galway, Ireland)
Breanndán Ó Beaglaoich (West Kerry, Ireland)
John Spiers (Oxfordshire, England)
Ness Melodeon Band (Isle of Lewis, Scotland)
Norman Mackay (Highlands, Scotland)
Will Pound (Warwickshire, England)
Noel Battle (Co. Westmeath, Ireland)
Michael Wright (Oxford, England)
More information here: www.buttonboxesandmoothies.com