2009 SPAE Artists Biographies
Brian McNeill,
Founder of the Scottish Music Program at the Royal Scottish Academy
of Music and Drama in Glasgow, Scotland, is a virtuoso on fiddle,
viola, mandolin, cittern, bouzouki, guitar, bass, concertina, and
hurdy-gurdy, and the importance of his songwriting has long been
recognized. Brian was a
founder of the Battlefield Band in 1969, one of Scotland’s best
known folk ensembles.
He has numerous recordings both solo and with other leading Scottish
traditional musicians.
The curriculum he set up at RSAMD
teaches as well as guides the students to be full-time
professionals in the art of Scottish traditional music.
www.brianmcneill.co.uk
Caroline
Pugh
performs, writes and teaches traditional music both in Scotland and
the USA. She
graduated with honors from the Royal Scottish Academy of
Music and Drama in June 2007.
She is a vocalist with a wide repertoire of Scots songs and
also plays historic harp from Scotland and Wales.
In addition to traditional music, her abilities include
interdisciplinary performance, experimental music and musical
director for theatre.
Her main areas of interest are folk influences in contemporary music
and the role communities play in creating music that reflects their
location.
Findlay Napier.
is a graduate of the Royal Scottish Academy of
Music and Drama’s Traditional Music Degree course where he now
teaches group work
and guitar. He is a founder member of Back of the Moon who won Best
Up and Coming Band and Folk Band of the Year at the Scottish Trad.
Music Awards and the Bolad De Loic Raison at Lorient Festival
Interceltique. Findlay co-managed Back of the Moon through three
critically acclaimed albums, one nominated for a Trad. Music Award,
and numerous North American and European tours. Findlay invented,
organized and presented the acclaimed Master and Apprentice and
Young Tradition concert series’ at Celtic Connections. Both series
ran for five years and promoted the work of many young Traditional
musicians. He is also an award winning song-writer and with his
writing partner, Nick Turner, has produced two albums of original
songs.
www.findlaynapier.com
Sara Ann Cull
comes from Auchmithie, Scotland. She graduated from the RSAMD
with Highest Honors in June, 2008. this will be her third year
to teach in St. Louis. She has also taught in the UK, Denmark,
Germany and Canada. She is a free-lance fiddler in Scotland
and plays regularly in the duo A Little Bit of Somethin (with
Heather Downie), The Shed Inspectors, The Ballachulish Hellhounds,
and with Brian McNeill and Dominique Dodge. She is equally
comfortable in Scottish Traditional Music and American folk music
such as bluegrass and old time. While still at the RSAMD, she
spent a semester at East Tennessee University
studying these
genre. She has been influenced by many music genres, plays fiddle,
piano and banjo and sings and composes. At 22 she is one of
the up and coming Scottish talents in traditional music. See
www.myspace.com/SaraAnnCull
Jim
Malcolm,
raised in Pethshire and Angus in Scotland, is recorded on Greentrax,
Linn Records, and Beltane Records and has appeared on Scottish radio
and television broadcasts and at all of the major folk festivals in
Scotland. He has toured
extensively in the US, UK, Germany, Canada, Denmark and Ireland both
as a solo artist and with Old Blind Dogs.
The Scots Traditional Music Society awarded him the
Songwriter of the Year Award in 2004, the same year they awarded Old
Blind Dogs the Scottish Folk Band of the Year Award—Jim was still
the lead singer at that time.
www.jimmalcolm.com
Willie
Ruff
is the hornist and bassist of the Mitchell-Ruff Duo featuring Dwike
Mitchell. The Duo
records, performs and lectures on jazz extensively in the US, Asia,
Africa and Europe.
Ruff, a Yale music faculty member since 1971, is founding Director
of the Duke Ellington Fellowship Program at Yale, a community based
organization sponsoring world-class artists mentoring and performing
with Yale students and young musicians from the New Haven Public
School System. Ruff’s
1992 memoir, “A Call to Assembly” was awarded the Deems Taylor ASCAP
award. He has written
widely on Paul Hindemith, Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn.
At Yale in April, 2007, Ruff hosted the Second International
Conference on Line-singing, a centuries-old a cappella form of
congregational church singing still sung by far-flung congregations
from the Scottish Hebrides (Gaelic Psalm Singing) to
African-American congregations in the Deep South, to remote churches
in Appalachia and the Indian Territory of Oklahoma.
These connections will be his focus in St. Louis.
www.willieruff.com.
