First published in The Herald on 30 May, 2018

Ronnie Hughes started fishing out of Pittenweem in 1968. At first he worked on the small boats that would land their catch daily at harbours around the East Neuk of Fife. After a couple of years he graduated to bigger vessels out of Aberdeen, crewing alongside men from Peterhead, Fraserburgh, Lossiemouth. They would head out to sea for weeks at a time — and that’s when he became aware of the singing.

It mainly happened on a Sunday, he tells me. “The lads from the north-east coast, they were generally more devout than us Fifers, and a lot of them would not work on the sabbath. That meant the boats would just shut down for the day, just lie there, even if we were out at sea. It was a strange thing, that silence, because generally on fishing boats there is gear hauling, there are radios blaring. Generally it’s a very noisy business. And then there would be this strange calm, and the songs.”

Continue reading →

First published in The Herald on 16 May, 2018

Last week the Scottish guitarist Sean Shibe was named Young Artist at the prestigious RPS Awards — call it the Mercury Prize for classical music. He was nominated alongside the soprano Louise Alder and the conductor Elim Chan, which means he had stiff competition.

The award recognised his “significant impact in the UK during 2017”, which indeed was a big year for 26-year-old Shibe. He released his first solo album — Dreams & Fancies: English music for solo guitar — a disc of refined, intelligent, stylish musicianship. Last summer, he toured a programme called softLOUD using acoustic and electric guitars, from Scottish medieval lute manuscripts to Steve Reich’s Electric Counterpoint. Now he has recorded that programme, and it’s due for release on Edinburgh’s Delphian label in September.

Continue reading →