SCOTTISH singer Karine Polwart has won the top prize at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards.
It’s the sixth time the musician has picked up a gong at the awards, but the first time she’s walked away with Folk Singer of the Year.
It was a good night for Scots at the annual prizegiving, with Siobhan Miller, and Mohsen Amini also among the winners.
Polwart’s last album, A Pocket of Wind Resistance, was the companion to theatre show Wind Resistance, written in collaboration with sound-designer Pippa Murphy.
The show about midwifery, ecology, the yearly flight of 2500 pink-footed geese between Greenland and Scotland, war, peace and Midlothian, tells the story of Will and Roberta Syme, a couple married in 1919. Accepting the award on Wednesday at the ceremony in Belfast, the singer paid tribute to the family, thanking the couple’s granddaughter, Meg Kristensen.
“The work that I’ve made in the past couple of years, A Pocket of Wind Resistance, has been inspired by the village that I live in and the landscape around about it, and Meg Kristensen has been very generous in sharing her stories,” she said.
Glasgow’s Amini, won two awards, one for Musician of the Year, and the Horizon Award, for Best Emerging Talent, for Imar.
Dundonian harpist Catriona McKay, and musical partner, Chris Stout, a fiddler from the Fair Isle, won best duo, while Siobhan Miller won the Best Traditional Track category for her version Banks of Newfoundland. She was also up for Best Folk Singer.
Other winners included the Armagh Pipers Club, who were given The Good Tradition Award to recognise their contribution to the preservation, dissemination and progression of traditional music over more than 50 years and Lankum, who won best group.
Music legend Van Morrison presented the Lifetime Achievement Award to musician and producer Donal Lunny for his contribution to folk music.
Influential singer-songwriter Nick Drake was inducted into the Radio 2 Folk Awards Hall of Fame to celebrate the lasting impression he has had on folk music, despite passing away in 1974 at the age of 26.
Lewis Carnie, Head of Radio 2 said: “I’d like to congratulate all of tonight’s winners - the calibre of nominees was extremely high and the wealth of talent that was seen on stage across the evening in Belfast was spectacular.
“The Radio 2 Folk Awards is an annual celebration of the thriving folk music scene - supporting both established and burgeoning folk musicians - and part of our specialist music content that Radio 2 is proud to broadcast across the year.”
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