Lunches & Evenings

The Driftwood Cowboys pick up musical flotsam from the Orkney shores and build something unique from it, connected by stories, reflections and conversation. Country, blues, swing, bothy ballads and traditional fiddle combine in humorous and heartfelt tales of island life. The four members of the band have travelled the world playing music in multiple groups, not least across the USA. Singer/songwriter Duncan McLean has written extensively about Western Swing, including his prize-winning book, Lone Star Swing: On the Trail of Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys. Also featured are three other familiar Orcadian names – Iain Tait (double bass), Brian Cromarty (guitar) and Douglas Montgomery (fiddle).

High in the south of Slovenia, near Italy and the Adriatic Sea, rises the great plateau of the Karst, a mass of limestone shaped by water. The trickle and seep deep within has over the ages dissolved away rock and opened up massive underground networks of caves. There are rivers and lakes, sinkholes and chasms, in a world that is often beautiful and sometimes like an artist’s fantasy. Join Dr Edvard Kobal to see images of the karst and find out about the landscape itself and the food it produces in the loamy terra rossa soil, including the red wine known as teran and the air-dried ham pršut.

Scottish composer Eddie McGuire’s five astronomy-inspired pieces of music have never been played before as a complete series. Tonight, to celebrate his 75th birthday, you can hear them together, with astronomer Dr Anne-Marie Heijmans of St Andrews University joining him in conversation. The music comes in three films specially recorded by musicians from the University, including trumpeter Bede Williams and members of the Wallace Collection. First comes the film Five Stars in Auriga, featuring Big Bang, Orbit, and Auriga where each instrument represents a star in the constellation. The pieces of music are interwoven with stories from the Scottish Borders of lives connected by astronomy and space. Then after a short break come Earthrise (symphonic poem for brass band) and Symphonies of Galaxies. Afterwards you can sit back with Orkney traditional musicians celebrating the occasion.

It took haystacks and henhouses, and massive seas opened up Kirkwall’s waterfront. The previous year had seen a hurricane, and 1953 brought the full force of the weather on to Orkney again, as Dr Tom Rendall hears, with recordings past and present and archive photos. Joining him are Ailsa Seatter from Westray, Billy Cardno from Kirkwall, and Donnie Grieve from Harray, along with recently recorded accounts from Isa Stanger in Kirkwall, Jim Pratt in Shapinsay and Jim Lennie in Sanday. Sarah Jane Gibbon reads a description written by her grandmother, Bessie Skea (Countrywoman).

Meet friends old or new and enjoy the best of Orkney cheese, meat, fish and baking. The One O’Clock Toast today is in memory of Rae Phillips, lightkeeper at various stations and miller at the Barony Mills for many years. It is given by Keith Johnson.