Workshop  ( £5, call 07971 511952 or email: jamie@jauncey.co.uk )

The event starts with a tunes workshop led by Angus Grant and Luke Plumb from 3.00 - 4.30 p.m. The workshop is suitable for all ages from 10 years upwards. Participants need to bring just their instruments and their enthusiasm for what will certainly be a highly enjoyable and rewarding session.

CD Launch / concert   Adults £5, under-18s £3 (2 for £5)

The evening's festivities kick off in the Arts Centre bar at 7.00pm with the joint Birnam Quartet CD / Fiddle Tree 2010 programme launch. Complimentary wine and soft drinks will be on offer.

The Quartet will give a performance, including music from the new album, in the main hall starting at 8.00 p.m. Following this, the musicians and audience will re-adjourn to the bar for an informal get-together during which the rest of the free wine will almost certainly be disposed of.

The Birnam Quartet are:

Anna-Wendy Stevenson - fiddle, Angus Grant - fiddle, Luke Plumb - mandolin and Jamie Jauncey - piano

The group was born after one of the legendary Monday night sessions in the Tap Inn. With Angus and Luke about to leave the snowy Scottish February for an Australian summer, the Birnam Quartet embarked on a two-night, after-hours recording session in the Tap Inn.

Selecting music from the collections of airs that Robert Burns used for his songs, their shared love of a beautiful melody and the interplay that can come from careful arrangement produced a beautiful collection of demos.

Since then, Anna-Wendy has moved to Benbecula to teach fiddle at the Gaelic College, Jamie has written two award-nominated novels, and Angus and Luke continue to travel the world with the band Shooglenifty. 

But in 2009 the four came together once again for the year of Homecoming and with assistance from the Scottish Arts Council, the Birnam Quartet has now revisited the music created on those two snowy nights in February 2006.

They have recorded and released their first CD entitled "The Music of Burns". The launch in Birnam marks the start of a Scotland wide-tour involving a concert series and regional workshops on the music of Burns and his life.

The Birnam connection: Scotland's most famous poet, Robert Burns is supposed to have met his most famous musical contemporary, the fiddler and composer Niel Gow, at Gow's home in the village of Inver, a few hundred yards from Birnam, in 1887 - when Burns was 28 years old and Gow 60.

Note: at the launch Edinburgh-based Sarah Hoy will stand in for Anna-Wendy Stevenson.

Tickets - see side MENU

AND THEN........

ACOUSTIC PERTHSHIRE - FEBRUARY 19TH 

The Fiddle Tree's first "official" event of the 2010 programme presents a range of locally-based artists under the banner "Acoustic Perthshshire Concert", with popular Birnam based singer Dave Amos and his acoustic trio, internationally acclaimed singer/songwriter Fraser Nimmo (who will just have returned from a run of dates in Texas) and the "local vocal" group, Just Singing, led by highly rated Scottish singer Christine Kydd.

The concert starts at 8.00 p.m.

Tickets

Adult tickets for this event cost £8 in advance or £10 on the door. Under-18s tickets are priced at the standard rates of £3 or 2 for a fiver.