News / Unst musician clinches young fiddler prize
GEORGE Spence from Unst was announced as Shetland’s Young Fiddler of the Year in front of a sell-out audience at Mareel on Saturday night.
Anya Johnston won the young fiddler senior title and George won traditional senior title, before being declared Young Fiddler of the Year based on his performance over both sections during the day and at the evening performance.
A change in the rules this year gave equal weighting to both the young fiddler and traditional sections in deciding the overall winner.
Shetland Folk Society secretary Valerie Watt said: “This has had a significant impact on the number of entries this year as more fiddlers are entering both the young fiddler and traditional sections in all age groups.
“Last year we had 153 entries from 101 fiddlers but this year we had 171 entries from the same number of fiddlers. This is great news as the young fiddlers and their tutors are valuing both our traditional and contemporary Shetland tunes.”
On Friday morning a record number of junior fiddlers (P6 and under) performed and Maisie Henderson was announced as the junior young fiddler and Amber Thomson as the traditional junior winner.
Due to increased entries the intermediate section, usually held on Friday afternoon, was extended into the evening and Ashleigh Jarmson was declared both the intermediate young fiddler of the year and the traditional winner.
Judges Catriona Macdonald, Iain Williamson and Linda Gear remarked that there was an increased variety of tunes being played in both sections and many fiddlers were performing very challenging tunes. There is an increased number of younger competitors with some as young as seven performing with confidence.
The concert began with Shetland Folk Society tune competition judges Violet Tulloch, Debbie Scott and Bryan Gear performing the winning tunes for both the senior and junior competitions.
George Spence was awarded the Curley Jamieson Memorial Cup for the junior tune competition and Jenny Henry was awarded the John Pottinger Memorial Shield for the senior competition. Margaret Robertson was awarded the David Hall Memorial Shield for the best reel in the Shetland style.
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