Fiona J. MacKenzie
Biography
From the Artist's site 2009.
Fiona, a native of Morayshire, has lived in Dingwall for the last 20 years and after working in Gaelic Medium Education for 5 years, worked as the Màiri Mhòr Gaelic Song Fellow for Highland Council between 2002-09.
Although she was brought up in the Scots Folk Tradition (her artist father Duncan Macpherson, was a well known Scots folkie in Morayshire) and still sings in the Scots tongue also, particularly with the Songs of Robert Burns. She won the premier prize for Gaelic Learners at the National Mod in 1996, the Silver Pendant and subsequently won many other major prizes at National Mods and other singing competitions. She won the Premier award for Gaelic Singing in Scotland, the Ladies Gold Medal, for Fluent speakers, at the Royal National Mod in Stornoway in 2005.
In 2004 she won the coveted BBC Scotland Traditional Music Personality of the Year Award at the Scots Trad Music Awards. She has also been nominated as Gaelic Singer of the year in both 2005 and 2006.
Her work in the Fellowship took her abroad to teach, lecture and perform, to Cape Breton, Germany, Estonia, Brittany, Holland, Seattle, New York, Washington DC, North Carolina, Virginia, Ireland and Wales.
She continues to manage a vocal harmony group for young people called Fionnar who have performed in Wales at the International Eisteddfod where they took the Pavilion by storm with their traditional ‘waulking’ and also in Ireland where they won the premier group prize at The Pan Celtic Festival in April 2006. They also released an EP (June 2009) on Fiona's own label, MacDug Music, entitled "Sgoil Roc".
You can listen to short samples from some of the tracks from this artist using the player below.
Releases