Fiddlers' Bid are a

Shetland Shetland, also called the Shetland Islands and formerly Zetland, is a subarctic archipelago in Scotland lying between Orkney, the Faroe Islands and Norway. It is the northernmost region of the United Kingdom. The islands lie about to the ...

based instrumental group known for playing contemporary arrangements of traditional Shetland fiddle tunes. The seven piece line-up consists of four fiddles,

acoustic guitar An acoustic guitar is a musical instrument in the string family. When a string is plucked its vibration is transmitted from the bridge, resonating throughout the top of the guitar. It is also transmitted to the side and back of the instrument, ...

bass guitar The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and s ...

and

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a musica ...

Clàrsach The Celtic harp is a triangular frame harp traditional to the Celtic nations of northwest Europe. It is known as in Irish, in Scottish Gaelic, in Breton and in Welsh. In Ireland and Scotland, it was a wire-strung instrument requiring gre ...

. The band have performed at some of the largest folk festivals in the world including the

Smithsonian Folklife Festival The Smithsonian Folklife Festival, launched in 1967, is an international exhibition of living cultural heritage presented annually in the summer in Washington, D.C. in the United States. It is held on the National Mall for two weeks around the F ...

Cambridge Folk Festival The Cambridge Folk Festival is an annual music festival, established in 1965, held on the site of Cherry Hinton Hall in Cherry Hinton, one of the villages subsumed by the city of Cambridge, England. The festival is known for its eclectic mix o ...

Festival Interceltique de Lorient __NOTOC__ The (French), Emvod Ar Gelted An Oriant (Breton) or Inter-Celtic Festival of Lorient in English, is an annual Celtic festival, located in the city of Lorient, Brittany, France. It was founded in 1971 by . This annual festival takes ...

and

Celtic Connections The Celtic Connections festival started in 1994 in Glasgow, Scotland, and has since been held every January. Featuring over 300 concerts, ceilidhs, talks, free events, late night sessions and workshops, the festival focuses on the roots of tra ...

, and have toured extensively including performances at

Melbourne Concert Hall Arts Centre Melbourne, originally known as the Victorian Arts Centre and briefly called the Arts Centre, is a performing arts centre consisting of a complex of theatres and concert halls in the Melbourne Arts Precinct, located in the central ...

and

Sydney Opera House The Sydney Opera House is a multi-venue performing arts centre in Sydney. Located on the foreshore of Sydney Harbour, it is widely regarded as one of the world's most famous and distinctive buildings and a masterpiece of 20th-century archit ...

. Several members of the band play Ewen Thomson violins

Discography

* ''Around The World'', Fiddlers’ Bid Recordings (1994) * ''Hamnataing'', Greentrax (1998) * ''Da Farder Ben Da Welcomer'', Greentrax (2001) * ''Naked and Bare'', Greentrax (2005) * ''All Dressed in Yellow'', Hairst Blinks Music (2009)

Awards and achievements

* Band members

Chris Stout Chris Stout (born 1976) is a Scottish fiddle/violin player from Shetland, now based in Glasgow. Stout grew up in Fair Isle and lived there until 8 years of age before moving to Sandwick on the Shetland Mainland, then on to Glasgow in the 1990s ...

and Andrew Gifford have both won the Shetland Young Fiddler of the Year competition *

, France, Winners of “La Trophe La Bolee de Corrigans” (1994) * Scottish Folk Awards “Best Live Act” (2003) * Australian Entertainment Industry Association's

Helpmann Awards The Helpmann Awards are accolades for live entertainment and performing arts in Australia, presented by industry group Live Live Performance Australia (LPA) since 2001. The annual awards recognise achievements in the disciplines of musical t ...

nomination “Best Contemporary Music Concert Presentation” (2003) * Band member

Catriona McKay Catriona McKay is Scottish harpist and composer. She is a contemporary explorer on the Scottish harp ( Clàrsach), having collaborated with folk and experimental musicians, as well as co-designing the Starfish McKay harp. She is a member of the ...

won "Instrumentalist of the Year" in the

Scots Trad Music Awards The Scots Trad Music Awards or Na Trads were founded in 2003 by Simon Thoumire to celebrate Scotland's traditional music in all its forms and create a high profile opportunity to bring the music and music industry into the spotlight of media an ...

(2007,2014) *

nomination "Best Live Act" (2005) *

nomination "Scottish Folk Band of the Year" (2007) *

winner "Album of the Year" for ''All Dressed in Yellow'' (2009)

References

External links

Official website
{{authority control Shetland music 1991 establishments in Scotland Musical groups established in 1991 Organisations based in Shetland Scottish fiddling Shetland fiddlers