Record-breaking Folk Festival gets under way today

The 34th annual Orkney Folk Festival kicks off this evening – featuring 55 events, 35 acts and over 300 musicians squeezed into four days of music.

For the third year running, the festival has once again broken its own box office record.

The festival board attribute these sales to a combination of the visiting line-up of artists, as well as the ever-increasing national standing that the festival holds – boosted substantially by nationwide coverage and profiling on BBC Radio2’s The Folk Show in May 2014.

Supporting the local artists, this year’s visiting line-up boasts world-renowned Chicago fiddler, Liz Carroll; Mercury-nominated Tyneside sister act The Unthanks; leading Gaelic songstress, Julie Fowlis, Finnish fiddle septet, Frigg; Scotland’s reigning Live Act of the Year, at the MG Alba Scots Trad Music Awards, RURA; and Acadian trio, Vishtèn, based in Canada’s Prince Edward Island – to name just a few of the eighteen inbound acts.

For more details, and to download the programme, see www.orkneyfolkfestival.com