BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards Winner 2018: Horizon Award.Glasgow's hottest new folk property, five-piece �mar have created more than a bit of a stir in little over a year since their formation.
Their debut video, unleashed to the world during Celtic Connections 2016, has been viewed in excess of 200,000 times - whilst their touring credits already including the opening set at that year's Cambridge Folk Festival and headlining a stage at Belgium's Dranouter Festival just a week later.
The Irish and Manx flavoured quintet's debut album 'Afterlight', is released on January 27, 2017 at their official Celtic Connections debut in the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall.
With a line-up featuring members of M�nran, RURA, Talisk and Barrule, and a heavyweight collective haul of top prizes � including the 2016 BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year, a BBC Radio 2 Young Folk Award, nine All-Ireland and eight All-Britain titles � the group's formation embodies a personal reconnection with its members' formative years, dating back long before their recent camaraderie around Glasgow's justly celebrated session scene.
Adam Brown (bodhr�n), Adam Rhodes (bouzouki), Mohsen Amini (concertina), Ryan Murphy (uilleann pipes) and Tom�s Callister (fiddle) share a strong background in Irish music � although only Murphy actually hails from Ireland; Rhodes and Callister are from the Isle of Man, whilst Amini is a Glasgow native, and Brown originally from Suffolk � and it is these foundations which underpin many of �mar's distinctive qualities, in both instrumentation and material. �mar's unmistakable synergy, however, centres on the overlapping cultural heritage between Scotland, Ireland and the Isle of Man. All three places once shared the same Gaelic language, and a similar, clearly potent, kinship endures between their musical traditions.
