BBC Radio Scotland Young Musician of the Year 2026, Rachel Groves, MG Alba Scots Trad Music Awards Scots Singer of the Year 2024, Beth Malcolm, and Folk Album of the Year 2026 winner for his album Curlew's Cry, the incredible Barry Kerr. What an incredible closing concert. BOOK EARLY!

Barry Kerr
Barry Kerr is riding a remarkable new wave of recognition, with his seventh studio album Curlew’s Cry winning the inaugural Folk Album of the Year award in 2026! March saw him on a special run of English dates: Stroud’s Prince Albert, a featured appearance at the Awards show in Manchester, Birmingham’s Nortons, and the Irish Cultural Centre in Hammersmith, London.

A celebrated composer, singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and visual artist, Barry is known for work that captures the raw pulse and quiet poetry of Irish life. Originally from the southern shores of Lough Neagh and now rooted in the wild landscape of Connemara, he has carved out a distinctive voice over more than two decades of touring and recording—sharing stages with some of Ireland’s most revered performers.

Barry recorded his debut album at just seventeen, launching an international career that has seen him collaborate with luminaries such as Steve Cooney, Cara Dillon, Julie Fowlis, Lumiere, and Dervish. His compositions have travelled even further, finding new life in the hands of artists including Karan Casey, Flook, Jiggy, Beoga, Brian Finnegan, Damian O’Kane, and Kate Rusby.

An award-winning musician with a reputation for artistic fearlessness, Barry received the inaugural Liam O’Flynn Award from the National Concert Hall and the Arts Council in 2020. In 2023, he served as Traditional Musician in Residence at University College Cork. His creative curiosity continues to push boundaries—most notably in Fuascail, his meditative film exploring Ireland’s decade of centenaries, broadcast on TG4 in December 2022.

At the heart of Barry’s recent work lies Curlew’s Cry: a haunting, luminous collection of original and traditional songs inspired by folklore, memory, and the natural world. In winning the Folk Album of the Year award it marks a powerful moment in the evolution of an artist whose voice is as timeless as it is unmistakably his own.

“Pipes and flute dip and soar with avian elegance” – The Irish Times
‘Like Gaughan and Moore, but with his own thing going on, I love this guy’. - Mike Harding
“Stopped me in my tracks. Could not stop listening. Stunning.” – Imelda May
“An exceptional, original, artistic and enduring masterpiece.” – Irish Music Magazine

BETH MALCOLM
‘FOLKMOSIS’ is Beth Malcolm’s second album, and musical coming of age story. Although the show was originally a commission for Celtic Connections, it is a story that has been writing itself since before Beth could speak.

Beth spent much of her childhood in a house filled with singing, soaking up old Scots songs like a wee folky sponge. She was named Scots Singer of the Year in 2022 and has toured extensively under the label of traditional music.

Told in three acts covering traditional and new song and the spoken word, ‘FOLKMOSIS’ straddles genres. The story bends and twists in a shifting soundscape.

Act 1 is rooted in the traditional world, like the classic folk songs Beth grew up listening to.  Act 2 follows her ‘rejection years’, where she dove into the rich voices of Amy Winehouse, Paolo Nutini and London Grammar. These love songs, sung from the chaos of modern life, were the soundtrack to angsty, heartfelt late teenage years.  Act 3 is Beth’s coming of age, her coming home, to the songs and sounds of Scotland, as a now grown woman.

Beth’s heart is laid bare in this story, and she invites you to come out and join her, and gie’s a sang.
And let her take you somewhere. 
And let her bring you home.

Rachel Groves
BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year 2026, Rachel Groves presents the lever harp as a contemporary and collaborative voice within Scottish folk tradition.

A graduate of Berklee College of Music, Rachel draws on inspiration from jazz and global folk traditions to explore the textural and rhythmic possibilities of the instrument. Hailing from Aberdeenshire, she has recently moved to Glasgow, where she enjoys playing in the city's vibrant session scene. Following on from being awarded the BBC Young Trad title at Celtic Connections this year, Rachel will present a new set of original and traditional music at several festivals this summer, alongside musicians and friends from Glasgow's music scene. She will be joined at Summer Trad Festival by guitarist Chris Amer and percussionist Gregor Black.

Scottish guitar player Chris Amer has slowly but surely established a reputation for his tasteful, distinctive, musically intelligent playing style. As a guitarist and composer, Chris has developed an original sound characterised by space, texture and carefully chosen notes. Primarily playing electric guitar and a unique 7-string theorbed tenor guitar, Chris’s playing comfortably sits on the ever-blurring boundaries between jazz and traditional Scottish music.

Gregor Black is steeped in both classical percussion and the musical traditions of Scotland and Ireland. He has gained his BMus Hons in percussion from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance before relocating to Glasgow to receive an MA in Traditional Music from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. A passion for musical exploration, Gregor enjoys weaving influences from the diverse variety of percussion which he has studied. Notably, Gregor has performed at Celtic Connections, WOMEX, the BBC Proms, Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival and the Edinburgh International Festival.

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