Still fiddling after two decades

Since it’s small beginnings in 2003, it has developed into a thriving organisation with workshops and classes in Borders tunes, session tunes and tune arrangements with guitar tutor Donald Knox writing, notating and composing tunes to suit the group’s wide array of players.

Tutors and support musicians at the group include Sheila Sapkota and Louise Douglas on fiddle, David Scott on percussion, Gary Smith on guitar and, previously, the late and very much missed, Tony Manning on double bass.

The group now has a comprehensive website (www.riddellfiddles.scot) and has been visited by groups of musicians from all over. For instance, last summer, a 75-strong contingent of musicians from Maine, USA, combined with Riddell Fiddles at Victoria Hall, Selkirk and, in a joint community venture with the town’s General Store. entertained a packed hall.

Over the years the group has played at thousands of venues and events, as well as introducing hundreds of people to the sheer joy of playing and performing traditional music. The group has even reached places as far-flung as Canada, Bavaria and Ireland, as well as playing a major role up to 2020 in the schools programme of the Celtic Festival of Barbados.

Sheila Sapkota was delighted to be an inductee for the 2015 Traditional Music Hall of Fame for services to community music. Other awards include the Voluntary Arts’ ‘Peer Award for Excellence’ award in Dublin in 2018, while the youth groups were honoured to be awarded 'Community Project of the Year' at the televised Scots Trad Music Awards in December 2021.

During the Covid 19 crisis Riddell Fiddles kept the youth and adult groups going with weekly Zoom groups and individual lessons with the youthful Burnfoot Buskers (Hawick) and Bannerfield Buskers (Selkirk) still going strong.

Next performances include Burnfoot Buskers on stage at the Hawick Reiver’s Festival in March, as well as a 20th year tour featuring a concert at the Heart of Hawick auditorium on Saturday, May 13.