Fiddler Shona Mooney is one of Scotland's leading young traditional musicians. The winner of the 2006 BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year, Shona began playing music with her parents in the band O'er the Border and has gone on to feature prominently in the acclaimed Borders Young Fiddles and CrossCurrent and has toured with the Scottish folk orchestra, Unusual Suspects.
Shona's first instrument was a tiny second-hand fiddle, bought in a junk shop in Peebles. During a peripatetic childhood moving between Newstead, Newtown, Westruther, Maxton, Eildon and Lauder in the Scottish Borders, she studied classical violin and traditional fiddle styles with the prominent Borders fiddler Lucy Cowan before joining the vibrant traditional musical scene fostered by Harris Playfair and John Mabon at Kelso High School.
In 2001 Shona became one of the first intake of the University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne's Folk and Traditional Music degree course. Her tutors included such great fiddlers as Catriona Macdonald, Chris Wood and Aidan O'Rourke and a great deal of her study time was spent researching Borders music. Much of Shona's repertoire comes from her father's research into Borders piping and she intends building upon this work by searching out more Borders melodies and interpreting them and integrating them with contemporary influences.
Shona graduated with first-class honours from Newcastle in 2005. While at Newcastle, she and four friends formed the band CrossCurrent which has played at prestigious events including Cambridge, Warwick and Dranouter folk festivals and released its first album, Momentum, in summer 2005.
She also plays with the all-women folk group 'The Sirens' and more recently has been working with bass guitarist and electronic experimentalist Anomaly (a.k.a. David JC de la Haye) who specialises in glitch music. They have collaborated on several projects, including composing the music for a photographic show reel commissioned by the Prince's Trust and Arts Council England, and they performed at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival 2005 using live fiddle, CDJ decks, a SU10 and an ES1 sampler.
Shona's compositions also include 'The Wildflower Suite', written for twelve musicians and inspired by Nell Hardie's watercolours, and as well as playing and composing she is committed to passing on her fiddling skills. She teaches privately and at The Sage in Gateshead and takes workshops at folk festivals up and down the country.
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