Mandolin maestro shortlisted for top tutor award
Adam Guest
An isles mandolin player has been shortlisted for a top music award after founding the Shetland Mandolin Band.
Tutor Jenny Henry is in the running for the Passing It On – Educator’s Award in the Hands up for Trad, Chorus Community Music Awards.
Jenny said the news came as a ‘bit of surprise”, with the 30-strong band being formed 18-months ago.
Since then the group, which includes players of a range of ages and abilities, has performed to hundreds of folk at the Shetland Folk Festival.
“The band has always been that size since the first night [of rehearsals],” said Jenny.
“I thought we would maybe get a dozen, but it’s stayed at that… All abilities are welcome, we try and write easier bits for folk that are just learning.”
Looking back to the Clickimin folk festival gig, she said: “It was just brilliant. There were 750 folk and it seemed to go down well.
“Folk seemed to like the different types of music; you’re not playing sets that the fiddlers play. We went on a world tour at the folk festival and we did six sets with eight tunes and they were all from different countries.”
Some of the band members are students of Jenny’s as she holds regular classes at High Level Music.
“We’re hoping to have our own concert later in the year as a fund-raiser kind of thing,” she said.
“We’ve got enough material to put on our own concert with a couple of extra acts.”
Voting for the competition opens today and runs until 16th June. The nomination with the most votes will then be named winner of that category.
The announcement of each winner will be made via a live Facebook event on 22nd June presented by Ali Burns and Simon Thoumire.
To vote go to https://projects.handsupfortrad.scot/chorusawards/voting-now-open-in-chorus-community-music-awards-2017
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