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. 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.
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 musicians of Birlinn Brew 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.
Thanks to all the hard work of the committee and support from local people, we have lots of fund-raising events throughout the year and have many projects with our young people in mind at the moment including our primary schoolchildren. We rely heavily on sponsors & donors for 50% of our funding and all contributions are always welcome to ensure that we can continue to run the event. If you would like to donate, simply click into the Contact Us section – each and everyone of them would be delighted to hear from you.
One of the many highlights over the years has been when we were 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!