Skipinnish have rocketed to the top of the Scottish music scene recently and their ascent is accelerating! Being named Live Act of the Year at the Scots Trad Awards, releasing four consecutive chart topping self-penned singles, a 3000 seat sell-out concert in the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall that finished with a standing ovation, and a string of headline appearances at some of Britain’s biggest music festivals have been just some of the Highland band’s recent highlights.
Kicking this year off with their new single “Alive” which reached number 26 in the UK music charts, followed in May by a new album “The Seventh Wave” and a totally sold-out album launch tour, 2017 has already been the biggest year yet for Skipinnish and there’s much more to come! The audience are sure to be dancing along to the wild driving tune sets and singing along to the band’s now classic anthems, The Island, December, Western Ocean, and the massively popular Walking on the Waves.
Roya MacLean, a box player from Muir-of-Ord started playing classical and scottish dance music on the accordion and piano at the age of seven. Her interest in music came from her grandfather, button box player Fraser MacLean whose band she used to play accordion and piano. Roya graduated with an honours degree in Gaelic and Traditional Music at Sabhal Mor Ostaig and followed on to complete a PGDE in primary teaching after being a self-employed musician for 4 years. Roya currently does freelance work in various bands, enjoys playing with her trio at local gigs, teaches accordion and piano in the Feis movement, and tutors accordion privately. She met Lisa Moyes and Colin Delmonte through Feis Rois.
Lisa Moyes, from Maryburgh, successfully completed four years of full time study on the BA (Hons) Gaelic and Tradtional Music course at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig on the Isle of Skye and studied for a semester at the University of Cape Breton in Nova Scotia where she researched Cape Breton style fiddling for her honours’ dissertation. Lisa recently had the pleasure of recording an album with her late grandfather, and accordionist, Colin Campbell from Oban, called The Rockfield Polka. She also joined harmonica player Donald Black, in recording two tracks on his latest album, Bho m’ Chridhe. Lisa is now based in Glasgow and is a full-time Gaelic primary school teacher.
Growing up in Tain, Colin was involved in traditional music from a young age playing the accordion and whistle at school. He later went on to learn the bassoon with local woodwind instructor, David Evans. Colin studied the bassoon at university and graduated BA Applied Music from the University of Strathclyde where he also developed a passion for playing the drums. He loves playing many different styles of music and, as well as playing with Inverness based ceilidh band ‘Highland Ceilidh’he also plays drums with Edinburgh based band band, Marram.