Isle of Jura Music Festival

The ‘Isle of Jura Music Festival‘ Organising Committee is a charitable, unincorporated association. Our purpose, as recorded in our constitution, is to organize and run a Music Festival on the Isle of Jura, provide opportunities for young people to learn/improve their music based skill and help them refine and develop those skills in the future. By bringing in top class musicians every year to perform and run workshops, the instruction and inspiration they provide is invaluable. One of these musicians is Archie Mcallister the fantastic fiddle player. Through our youth education programme we have been able to help through a small annual grant, a number of young people to fulfill their potential and follow their chosen path including music tuition in Small Isles Primary School.

The island has a wealth of musical talent. As well as Pete Smoke and the Roaches, one of the best cover bands on the West Coast, there’s RSAMD graduate and fiddle player Simon Moran from Deoch n Dorus; his singer/songwriter brother

Danny Moran, a top traditional musician now based in Dublin; their local partner in ‘crime’ from ‘Cum-A Dol’ the excellent accordian player Graham Rozga, the talented local pipers and one of the stalwarts of West Coast style, David MacDonald is an established box player and released two albums with the Jura Ceilidh Band.

One of the many highlights over the years has been when we have been repeatedly nominated in the first Scottish Traditional Music Awards held in Queens Hall Edinburgh in the Best Music Festival category. Celtic Connections won it, but we were up in the top three with them…small things from little acorns grow!

Sponsored by the Isle of Jura Distillery on the Sunday early evening is a stand up concert in the Jura Distillery Cooperage. It is incredibly popular and has featured bands including Skippinish and Wolfstone and Skerryvore. More information on this is available on the website. www. juramusicfestival.com