Fiddlers at the Harvest Home
To celebrate the 100th Birthday of George Mackay Brown, the Festival has commissioned six Orkney fiddlers and composers to write tunes which respond to verses from the poem Fiddlers at the Harvest Home. Before you listen to the tunes, you can watch Vera Butler read the poem filmed in Barony Mill. Each fiddler has filmed their new tune at home during lockdown. After, or before, you have heard the new tune responses to the verses within the poem you can find all the performers coming together in Douglas Montgomery's new jig taken inspired by the poem's title. Fiddlers feature heavily in the work of Mackay Brown as constant images of the Orkney community ranging from the poem Fiddlers at the Wedding to the short story The Two Fiddlers which inspired Peter Maxwell Davies' opera for young people of the same name. Follow the poem to the tunes to hear Orkney's finest contemporary representatives of the fiddle tradition.
Fiddlers at the Harvest Home - The Poem
Pre-Recorded Film
The original George Mackay Brown that inspired the newly commissioned fiddle tunes read by Vera Butler
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Fiddlers at the Harvest Home - the tune
Pre-Recorded Film
A new tune composed by Douglas Montgomery and performed by Kristan Harvey, Eric Linklater, Jean Leslie, Douglas Montgomery, Jennifer Wrigley and Graham Rorie
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