21st May 2010
Reporter - Noel Donaldson
CAITHNESS Music Festival celebrates its 56th birthday next month and is very much on song.
There are 242 classes reflecting a wide range of vocal solos, verse speaking, choirs and instrumental performances in the festival, which opens on June 7 and runs for five days. It has attracted entries from as far afield as Skye.
Veteran festival convener, Trevor Williams, is "delighted" with the entries response which showed an increase on last year's total and he was particularly pleased to announce a new class, Play for Pleasure. However, it could prove a tall order for Benjamin Denley-Spencer from Wick, who is more than a little outnumbered in what has proved to be an inter-town affair...all the other thirteen competitors are drawn from Thurso schools.
There is also keen competition in the traditional music class although the Scots Fiddle Solo (adult, own choice) is very much a family affair with Kenneth and Colin Stone, from Castletown, the only competitors. Fellow family members, Michael and Christopher Stone, are up against eight other competitors, however, in the Scots Fiddle Solo (secondary schools) .
North entrants in the primary and secondary school accordion sections will have to box clever as they face stiff competition from Ross-shire and Skye exponents.
Anne Dunnett, the Lord Lieutenant of Caithness, is making a welcome return to the festival in which she competed as a scholar...this time as an adjudicator. She will judge the six Caithness dialect sections.