Back of the Moon
BACK OF THE MOON are one of Scotland's finest Trad bands. 2005 saw them win 'Best Folk Band' at the Scottish Trad Music Awards, while their brilliant new album 'Luminosity' was nominated for 'Best Album'. Since forming in 2000, the band have rapidly gained a reputation for their dynamic live performances. Back of the Moon create a giant acoustic sound through their tightly-woven frontline of Scottish border pipes and fiddle, the intimate pairing of low whistle and flute, the distinctive rhythmic force of their guitar/piano rhythm combo, and awesome three-part vocal harmonies in their Scottish songs - in which each unique singer takes the lead.
At the Scots Trad Music Awards 2003, the band won the 'Best Up and Coming Band' award. At a live concert in Slovenia they were filmed by the BBC for Burn's night 2005, and their live set at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall during Celtic Connections 2003 was broadcast on BBC Radio Scotland. Multi-instrumentalist Ali Hutton joined the band for their third album 'Luminosity', released in August 2005. The album was nominated for 'Best Album' at the Scots Trad Awards and reviewed with four stars in the Herald and Scotsman. The awards in 2005 also saw a nomination for Hamish Napier as 'Best up and Coming Artist', but most impressive of all, after 5 years of hard work and touring in Canada, Europe and up and down the UK, Back of the Moon received 'Best Folk Band'.
Members: GILLIAN FRAME Fiddle and vocals -Gillian Frame comes from the Isle of Arran on the West Coast of Scotland. Hailing from a family of musicians she was introduced to traditional Scots and Irish music at an early age.
In January 2001 Gillian won the prestigious Young Scottish Traditional Musician 2001 Award. Since then she has been rapidly gaining experience in all areas of traditional music, using her talents as fiddle player and singer in both performing, recording and teaching contexts, and in 2002 graduated from The Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama with BA (Scottish Music) Hons degree. During the Celtic Connections festival 2002 Gillian debuted her 'New Voices' commission, "Kinship Theory", which consists of all her own compositions and arrangements, and amongst numerous other performances played in the first ever, "Unusual Suspects" a piece put together by Corrina Hewat and Dave Milligan involving over thirty of Scotland's top Traditional Musicians.
HAMISH NAPIER Piano, Flute, Whistles, Vocals, Stepdance-Hamish Napier and is a Scottish traditional musician and music teacher living in Glasgow. He plays piano, flute, whistle, sings and stepdances (traditional Scottish tap dancing). He was a finalist in the 'Young Scottish Traditional Musician of the Year Award 2006' and was nominated for 'Best Up and Coming Artist' at the Scots Trad Awards 2005. Originally from Strathspey, Hamish was steeped in traditional music by my family from an early age - his mother, Marie-Louise Napier, is a singer/composer/harpist and his older brother Findlay Napier is a singer/songwriter/guitarist. At 24, Hamish has appeared on a dozen albums of Scottish traditional music, produced by the likes of Donald Shaw (Capercaille), Martin Bennett and Mary Anne Kennedy (BBC Radio Scotland presenter of folk/world music show Global Gathering'). He has performed with the Margaret Bennett Band, The Scottish Stepdance Company, the infamous Walkabout Ceilidh Band, the Jamie Smith Band, the Gary Innes Band, the Anna Massey Band and The Trotters.Hamish's main project is performing with multi-award winning Scottish band 'Back of the Moon', but he has also set up a solo project called 'The Hamish Napier Duos', where he is paired with one of half a dozen other Scottish multi-instrumentalists. The Duos is mainly a project designed for corporate events, but have performed just as often in a large concert setting, including four appearances at Glasgow's Piping Live Festival 2005, and twice at Celtic Connections 2004.Also a music teacher, Hamish has taught/taken workshops at dozens of music schools and festivals abroad including Canadian Folk Festivals Calgary and Goderich and the Sunshine Coast Music Camp. At home in Scotland he has taught at Celtic Connections Festival, the Glasgow Fiddle Workshop, The RSAMD (Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama) 'Scottish Music' degree course, and at various Feisean (Gaelic music camps in Scotland) including some of the largest ones Feis Rois and Feis An Earrich. Hamish also occasionally teaches piano or group work at the prestigious National Centre of Excellence in Traditional Music at Plockton High School.
ALI HUTTON Pipes, whistles & bodhran with Back of the Moon. Also plays guitar & bouzouki-Ali Hutton (23) is from Methven in Perthshire and has been playing the Highland bagpipes since the age of 7. He studied Scottish Music at the RSAMD under multi-instrumentalist Brian McNeill and also plays guitar, whistle, bouzouki and bodhran. He toured throughout Europe with the Vale of Atholl pipe band for a number of years, winning the national youth pipe band competition as their pipe major. Through this he received tuition from the virtuoso piping brothers Gordon and Ian Duncan. At 18, he was performing at festivals in Spain and at Celtic Connections with Gordon Duncan's band 'Clueless'.
Ali has a considerable amount of depping experience: playing pipes/whistles for Deaf Shepherd, Cantrip, The Gordon Duncan Band and The Scottish Fiddle Orchestra, and playing bodhran with Glasgow-Irish instrumental trad band Beneche. He joined young Scottish folk group Brolum for their second album 'The Fair Face I Never Saw', appearing several times with them on Scottish Television and radio. Ali recently recorded with Karen Matheson and Donald Shaw for the BBC Scotland Hogammany show 2005 and BBC Burns Night 2007. He performed many times with Dougie MacLean, including MacLean's 'Perthshire Amber' production in the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall at Celtic Connections 2005. He played guitar on Glasgow fiddler Jamie Smith's solo album, and on on Rodger Lyall's Tale of the Howe - an album celebrating the history of Kincardineshire in music and song, with narration from Lewis Grassic Gibbon's famous novels. He currently plays with Back of the Moon, Ross Ainslie & Jarlath Henderson, Brolum, The Trotters and the Jamie Smith Experiment.
FINDLAY NAPIER Guitar and vocals-Findlay Napier is a graduate of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama BA (Scottish Music) course and was among the first ten to graduate. He studied Scots Song under Andy Hunter and Alison MacMorland.
His love of Songwriting has led to his own songs being broadcast and recorded by other artists. He is currently co-writing in a highly successful partnership with producer Nick Turner. Their album, which will be called 'Queen Anne's Revenge', will be released in winter 2005 (read more).
In the BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year Award 2002 Findlay was one of the eight finalists. It was during this that the idea of a non-competitive stage for young musicians led Findlay to come up with the highly acclaimed 'Master and Apprentice' and 'Young Tradition' concert series. The concerts, held at Celtic Connections in Glasgow, showcase the best young talent in Scottish music today and have received fantastic reviews across the board. Now approaching their 4th year, the series have grown out of their original small venue and into the Concert Hall in Glasgow.
Findlay has accompanied and sung with performer Margaret Bennett at the Celtic Connections Festival and abroad. He features on Margaret's album 'In the Sunny Long Ago' which was produced by the late Martyn Bennett.
His teaching experience covers a number of different areas. He has taught workshops in guitar and song at festivals and has been a tutor at numerous Feisean, at the Aberdeenshire based Gordon Gaetherin' and at The Sunshine Coast Fiddle Camp in British Colombia, Canada. Also across the Atlantic Findlay performed at the Juno awards in Calgary, Canada with fiddler Gillian Frame and cellist Christine Hanson.
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