Mike Vass

Mike Vass

Mike Vass is a Scottish fiddler, composer and producer from Nairn, Scotland. He plays in the folk and Scottish traditional music scene, and is also active as a teacher.

Career

He wins the inaugural Neil Gow International Composition Award, and his compositions appear in the recordings and performances of a number of UK acts, including Brian Finnegan, Corrina Hewat and Mairearad Green. He is regarded as one of Scotland’s leading fiddle players and performs in several combinations, including with his twin sister Ali, in the duo Innes Watson & Mike Vass, and with the international group Fiddle Rendezvous, which features Bruce Molsky, Maryann Kennedy and Gerry O’Connor. He also tours with the Scottish song band Malinky.

Compositions and performances

Vass’s New Voices Commission String Theory debuts at Celtic Connections. One of its pieces, the avant-garde work Man’s Search, is inspired by Viktor Frankl’s book of the same name and is later featured by the Victor Frankl Institute in Austria to mark Frankl’s birthday.

Awards and recognition

He is nominated for Best Up and Coming Act at the 2007 Scots Trad Music Awards with his twin sister Ali, and for Best Folk Band with Malinky in 2009. He is runner-up in the 2007 BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year competition and later tours with the 2008 finalists as an accompanist.

Recordings

By the time of these early career achievements, he appears on more than a dozen recordings. These include Volume 1 of The Complete Songs of Robert Tannahill, produced by Dr Fred Freeman, and Malinky’s fourth album Flower and Iron.