About Graham Rorie
Orcadian fiddle and mandolin player Graham Rorie is an award-winning folk musician based in Glasgow. A graduate of the Traditional Music course at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Graham has been making a name for himself as a performer, composer, session musician and producer.
While still in the early stages of his career Graham has gained a wealth of performance experience appearing at festivals including Glasgow’s Celtic Connections, Celtic Colours (Canada), Festival Interceltique de Lorient (France) and Celtica Valle D’Aosta (Italy).
As a founding member of quartet ‘Gnoss’, Graham has picked up his second Danny Kyle Award at Celtic Connections, reached the Semi-Finals of the BBC Radio 2 Young Folk Award and been nominated for ‘Up and Coming Artist of the Year’ at the MG Alba Scots Trad Music Awards in 2017. Gnoss released their latest album ‘Drawn From Deep Water’ in April 2019 and it was shortlisted for ‘Album of the Year’ at the same Scots Trad Awards that year.
In a recent venture, Graham brought together a selection of Glasgow based musicians to present a suite of newly-composed music inspired by his fellow Orcadians who travelled to northern Canada to work for the Hudson’s Bay Company during the 18th and 19th centuries. The premier of this new work took place at Celtic Connections 2020 with a sold-out headline show incorporating collaborations with Quebec’s Le Vent Du Nord.
An in-demand session musician, Graham has featured on fiddle and mandolin for albums by artists including the Red Hot Chilli Piper’s Dougie McCance, BBC Radio 2 Young Folk Award 2017 winners Josie Duncan and Pablo Lafuente, and 2018 MG Alba Scot’s Singer of the Year Iona Fyfe.
“Rorie, as well as catching the eye by playing fiddle right-handed and mandolin left-handed but upside down, writes tunes with an engaging twist and adds imaginative colour to arrangements that are smartly punctuated and crisply executed.” - Rob Adams, The Herald
"Rorie demonstrates great compositional versatility deeply rooted in traditional music.” - Su O’Brien, folking.com
Musical instruments & styles
Instruments
Violin, Mandolin, Folk Fiddle, Tenor Guitar
Styles
Folk