Fiona Mackenzie
Saturday 24 June 2023
9.30pm

Solas – Shedding light on a Scottish Gaelic archive

Conversation with

Fiona MacKenzie, Music Composition Prize
Curated by: Flavio Giacchero e Paola Bertello

Gaelic Language

Biography

Fiona J.Mackenzie graduated in University of Aberdeen with a specialization at the University of the West of Scotland where she received her MA in Gaelic Songwriting & Performance.

She currently lives on Canna Island in the Inner Hebrides where she’s an archivist at Canna House, the place where are preserved the materials comprising Campbell Collections of Folklore, Photography and Songs,known worldwide.

At the same time she’s active as a Gaelic Performing Artist.

She won “An Comunn Gaidhealach Gold Medal” in 2005 and currently collaborates with the “Greentraks” label with which she recently released an album, “Tac an Teine” based on the archives of Canna.

Margaret Fay Shaw Campbell and John Lorne Campbell’s works gave her the inspiration to devote her career to Gaelic song and folklore.

She has lectured on the Campbells’ work in North America and Europe (Harvard, St Francis Xavier,Nova Scotia among others).

She considers one of the highlights of her career as a performer to have been the “song leader” and “mentor” for the “waulking women” theme in the early years of the “Outlander” series. She’s very happy to have had the opportunity to introduce the world of Gaelic song to an audience that would probably be unlikely to have approached this ancient language of Scotland.

Motivation Music Composition Prize

There are distant lands, difficult to reach and sometimes difficult to live in. These lands, almost always, hold treasures. The treasures are the lands themselves, in their wild wonder, the treasures are the culture that the people have brought, invented, preserved, handed down, living these lands. Fiona’s gratefully bestowed the Music Prize as the “keeper of the flame,” a definition she herself used in titling a song-dedication to an archivist she replaced, fueling that flame so that it would not go out. She’s recognized with the Prize for the great work she has done in enhancing the sources and cultural heritage to which she belongs, the Gaelic culture and language of Northern Scotland. An exemplary figure who has moved with sensitivity, dedication and passion between study, analysis, preservation and artistic repurposing to continue to keep the flame of that culture, its sounds, its stories alive: a Prize for embracing the priceless legacy of Gaelic songs and language, for making available and giving back that culture so that it continues to resonate.

Photos by Fabio Ferrero

PARTNERS

Atl Cuneo
Fondazione CRT
Fondazione CRC
Radio Lenga d'Oc
Pen Club
LO CIRDOC
LO CIRDOC
LO CIRDOC
LO CIRDOC
Nethics: Web Marketing & Web Solutions
Chambra D'Oc
Stemma Ostana

Comune di Ostana

Regione Piemonte - Logo 50 anni

The Ostana Prize celebrates the international support received

from the UNESCO International Decade of Indigenous Languages, and from two reference institutions in the linguistic field: the ELEN network (European Language Equality Network) and the NPLD network (Network to Promote Linguistic Diversity).

Chambra D'Oc
Stemma Ostana
Regione Piemonte - Logo 50 anni