Donald WG Lindsay & Alasdair Roberts at The Salmon Bothy, Portsoy
Donald and Alasdair will present a programme featuring a rich variety of pipe tunes with guitar accompaniment, as well as a broad selection of songs both traditional and original. The pipe tunes bring together a diverse range of influences, from Scots fiddle tunes (Donald’s elder brother’s fiddling being an early influence), by way of Hungarian and Romanian pipe music, to classic and contemporary Highland piping and Lowland, Border and Northumbrian tunes. The songs range from variants (some rare, some more well-known) of traditional ballads or ‘muckle sangs’, to songs from the Scots lyrical tradition from the early modern period onwards, to contemporary songs written by both Alasdair and Donald.
In the company of Donald WG Lindsay and Alasdair Roberts, listeners can expect a thrilling evening in which rare and splendid gems of Scottish musical history and tradition will be brought to life in the hands of two unconventional masters, who invite you to join them in celebrating thirty years of music and friendship!
Listen here: https://on.soundcloud.com/RZFyD
Alasdair Roberts : fingerstyle guitar, vocals
Alasdair Roberts is a musician (primarily a guitarist and singer) who is based in Glasgow Scotland. He has worked with Drag City Records since 1997, firstly releasing three albums of self-written material under the name Appendix Out and then several albums under his own name. He has also released music on labels such as Secretly Canadian, Galaxia and Stone Tape Recordings. His work mainly consists of two parallel strands: self-written song material and interpretations of traditional songs and ballads from Scotland and beyond.
Alasdair has collaborated widely with many different musicians throughout his musical career, including the Scottish Gaelic singer Mairi Morrison, with whom he made the 2012 album Urstan. He has also collaborated with artists from other disciplines such as puppeteers (Shane Connolly, with whom he worked on a puppet theatre interpretation of the Scottish folk play ‘Galoshins’), film makers (including Luke Fowler, contributing a soundtrack to his film ‘All Divided Selves’) and, most recently, a poet (fellow Scot Robin Robertson, with whom he made the 2013 album Hirta Songs).
“He discovers the inner mystery of traditional music and shows that if this infinitely expressive material is respected, it may yet reward us with results that sound utterly unprecedented. Five stars.” – The Times
Donald WG Lindsay : Scottish smallpipes, vocals
The inventor of the Lindsay System, a sophisticated new Scottish instrument based on the smallpipes, the original prototypes of which are now featured in the museum display of the National Piping Centre in Glasgow. A number of young Scottish musicians have taken up this new three-octave design of Scottish smallpipes, most notably Malin Lewis who is currently touring their debut album Halocline. Donald himself has been featured widely on BBC Radio 3, 4, and 6 music, both with his unique instrument and as a singer, being described by Iggy Pop in 2020 as “really, really good”. He returned in 2022 to live on the Orkney Islands, after three years spent developing his original instrument designs on Ascension Island in the South Atlantic, and finally returns to live touring this autumn with a series of duo dates with Alasdair Roberts this September beginning with an intimate performance on the remote Orkney island of Papay, and culminating in shows at Edinburgh’s Summerhall, and the Tolbooth in Stirling
