Atlantic Edge Music Services

Shetland Schools Music Festival

November 20, 2010

Atlantic Edge Music Services have been awarded the contract to organised and run the 2011 Shetland Schools Music Festival - the third year in succession the company has undertaken this task.

The Shetland Schools Music Festival is a largely non-competative five day event focusing on all kinds of music making throughout Shetland's schools, with young participants from almost every school throughout the islands taking part in one way or another. The festival features around 40 different performance related 'classes' incorporating solo, duo and large / small groups, with well over 1500 individual children taking part each year. 

Each individual performance is subject to formal and professional adjudication. This years adjudicator is Val Brodie who has worked on projects with the Royal Opera House Education, is a validator for Arts Council England and also adjudicates for Regional and National Youth Music Festivals.

The Shetland festival alternates annually between primary and secondary pupils, with secondary age groups taking part in the performance and adjudication element of the festival one year, while primary classes are provided with a variety of music related workshops - and then vice versa the following year.

The festival also incorporates the junior and senior Young Musician of the Year competitions - the only genuinely competative element of the festival as a whole.

The festival now opens with a special VIP concert featuring a range of different artists, and closes five days later with a huge gala concert in Lerwick's Clickimin Centre, featuring many of the outstanding performances from earlier that week - including the winners of the senior and junior Young Musicians of the Year competition.

In 2011 the festival runs from 14th - 17th March inclusive - with the opening concert in Lerwick Town Hall on Sunday 13th March (starting at 7pm) and the closing gala concert in the Clickimin Centre on Thursday the 17th, again starting at 7pm. The junior and senior Young Musician of the Year competitions will take place in Lerwick Town Hall on Wednesday the 16th March at 7.30pm.

Manager of 'Atlantic Edge Music Services' Davie Gardner said they were delighted to be awarded the contract again in 2011. "The Shetland Schools Music Festival is a hugely exciting and rewarding event to be involved with" he said. "It gives me, and indeed the whole Shetland public, the opportunity to see and celebrate the huge amount of talent and top quality music making that takes place throughout our local schools. Equally importantly it allows everyone, including parents, to see the results of Shetland Islands Council's significant investment in music making in Shetland schools and serves as a tremendous profile event for our young musicians of the future into the bargain".

Full details of the festival programme will be available in early 2011.