“Shetland fiddlers are almost a separate entity. There’s always been a sort of virtuosity to the playing and a great swing to the way they approach traditional music,” says Scottish violinist and singer Seonaid Aitken.
Best known to Shetland audiences for fronting Rose Room, Seonaid’s CV ranges from playing with Deacon Blue and Eddi Reader to a touring production of The Lion King and arranging work for a BBC/Richard Curtis adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Esio Trot.
She has chalked up two decades’ experience with the Orchestra of Scottish Opera and won Scottish jazz awards with Rose Room, yet such is her enthusiasm for all things Shetland you sense the connections and rapport she has built up with islanders mean every bit as much to her.
A Glasgow-based four-piece specialising in gypsy jazz and 1930s ‘Hot Club’ standards, Rose Room were first invited to play at the Shetland Folk Festival in 2014.
She immediately recognised islanders’ approach to traditional music as “brilliant for matching up with folk in our band”, something Seonaid largely attributes to legendary Shetland guitarist ‘Peerie Willie’ Johnson, whose innovative style married elements of American swing and jazz with the isles’ traditional fiddle music.
Rose Room double bassist Jimmy Moon, who since the late seventies has hewn guitars for everyone from Bryan Adams and Adele to the Scissor Sisters and Wet Wet Wet, has long enjoyed a close friendship with Shetland mandolinist and instrument maker Kenny Johnson.
He assured Seonaid they would “absolutely love it” after their first folk festival booking came in but Seonaid admits, “I didn’t know just quite how much we would love it”.
“We felt so embraced by everyone,” she says. “The organisers were so lovely, all the local musicians, and of course all the other bands on the bill. We just got really stuck into it and it was such an amazing time, playing jam sessions left, right and centre. I don’t think we slept the entire time we were there!”
