POPULAR traditional band Skerryvore got the crowds moving on Saturday night as old and young mixed for a fundraising ceilidh in Lochgilphead’s Argyll Hotel.

ON Saturday in a packed Ardrishaig Hall, the vocal duo, ‘Alma’ with pianist, Robert Melling, presented a highly enjoyable recital for the Mid Argyll Arts Association and the programme, in five sections, was positively ingenious in its variety.

Wilma MacDougall (soprano) is a great favourite in Argyll, hailing as she does from Tarbert, whose music lovers turned out in force to welcome her and partner, Colette Ruddy (mezzo-soprano).

TOMORROW night (Feb.16), Ardrishaig Hall sees the return to the Mid Argyll stage of the outstanding and highly successful soprano from Tarbert, Wilma MacDougall. Together with Colette Ruddy (mezzo-soprano) and Robert Melling (piano), this distinguished trio known as ‘Alma’ have delighted audiences the length and breadth of the country since their formation in 1997.

Jim McMillan, President of Inveraray Burns Club, welcomed over 60 members and guests to the Argyll Hotel, Inveraray to celebrate the 249th anniversary of the birth of the Bard.

The haggis was piped in by Laura McMillan and carried aloft by 11-year-old Mark Stark whose mum Pamela, a club member enthusiastically addressed. After an excellent traditional dinner the company settled down to a first class evening of entertainment.

The Lochgair Association’s Burns Supper was well attended by locals and honoured guests alike. It was a traditional evening, with an all Mid-Argyll ‘cast’.

Chairman Tom McKay started proceedings with The Selkirk Grace, and the haggis was piped in by Craig Laing, carried by John Barleycorn himself, and lauded with Ian Duncan’s Address to the Haggis.

ALTHOUGH the Crear (Kilberry) concert season does not officially begin until May, Kate Lithgow, Crear Artistic Director, took the splendid initiative to organise a New Year Supper concert on January 5, with a Quintet led by accordion supremo, Karen Tweed.

2007 was a busy year for local indie rock band 32 Miles to Breakfast but 2008 could be the year they get the breakthrough they’ve been waiting for.

The young Mid Argyll group are hoping to get on the bill for T in the Park and Connect this year and a gig in front of music industry scouts in February could give them the exposure they need. They have also been confirmed for the Skye festival this summer.

For the first time, in its thirty-year history of entering the local Argyll one-act play festivals, Lochgilphead Drama Club is putting forward three plays to take part in the festivals in Campbeltown, Oban and Ardrishaig.

After beginning the drama season in November with their successful pantomime, Robinson Crusoe and the Pirates, the club’s next targets will be the festivals. Sixteen club members expressed a wish to act in a play and, for the first time, three experienced directors stepped forward to take charge.

Next Tuesday sees the Dalriada Accordion and Fiddle Club spring into action again, when the guest artists will be John Renton and his Scottish Dance Band.

Based in Inveraray, but with band members from far further afield, John Renton is often in demand whenever Scottish dance music of the highest calibre is called for, and flawless rhythm and original selections are a hallmark of his band, which has been together now for many years.

INVERARAY showcased its talent recently with a ‘Stars in Your Eyes’ concert to rival anything its television equivalent has to offer.

The performances, held at Inveraray Primary School over two nights, included parents, pupils and community groups covering a bewildering range of material.

FOLLOWING hard on the heels of the British Fashion Awards in London, Ardfern hosted its own Fair Trade fashion show in Craignish Village Hall last Saturday.

On a wild and stormy night, about 100 people braved the elements to enjoy one of Ardfern’s famous ‘curry nights’ after which they were entertained by Craignish’s own supermodels, who strutted their stuff on the catwalk with great aplomb

THE heavens opened, the roads were under water and everyone may have been drenched to the skin but the Tarbert turned out in force in the teeth of a howling gale and rain to switch on the village Christmas lights and have a good time on Saturday evening.

Iris Kerr from the organising committee said how overwhelmed everyone was that so many people turned out in such bad weather to show their support and join in.

‘The best, yet!’... ‘A marvellous show!’...‘a great night out!’... were some of the compliments directed at Lochgilphead Drama Club by the three delighted and very responsive audiences who watched the club’s lively and entertaining pantomime, ‘Robinson Crusoe and the Pirates’ by Paul Reakes, on November 9-10 in Ardrishaig Public Hall.

Each performance got off to a rousing start provided by the town crier, (Trevor Cole), followed by the spirited dancing of the townspeople, played by nine energetic boys and girls, (Stewart MacLean, Emma MacLean, Fiona Cupples, Iona Baillie, Alasdair Mackintosh, Nicola Ellis, Kirsten Way, Katie Glencross, Christina MacLean). The children also danced as the happy holidaymakers, fought as fearless Pirates and gave the audiences a fright as the little horrors! Two of them, Alasdair and Stewart, were also sailors aboard the Dancing Dolphin.

MID ARGYLL writer Marian Pallister, who lives at Kilmichael Glassary, was in Lochgilphead last Saturday signing copies of her latest book.

Marian’s book, Argyll Curiosities, contains information about planned railways from Scotland to Northern Ireland and maps showing where they might go. It also relates the story of a disaster in Crarae quarry in 1886 and the painting of Christ on Davaar Island among other ‘curiosities’.

ARDRISHAIG is to play host to a visit by Dundee-based Scottish Dance Theatre, our national contemporary dance company.

The dancers will first be offering a dance workshop in Ardrishaig Public Hall on Wednesday, November 21, from 5 – 6.30pm. This will be open to adults and secondary school students.

AFTER extolling the virtues of voting for Mid Argyll Pipe Band for Pipe Band of the Year in last week’s Advertiser, in the interests of fairness we should point out that Inveraray and District Pipe Band are also nominated in this category for the second year running.

The two local bands are up against Strathclyde Police Pipe Band and the National Youth Pipe Band of Scotland in the Scottish Traditional Music Awards.

THE INVERARAY & District Accordion & Fiddle Club opened its new season at the Argyll Hotel on October 10 to a full house.

THE theme for this year’s lantern parade is ‘The Battle of Dunadd’; a historical theme chosen to celebrate the Year of Highland Culture. Dunadd is one of Scotland’s most important archaeological monuments as it is thought to be the centre of the Kingdom of Dalriada – home of a tribal grouping known as the Scotti, from whom Scotland as a whole takes its name. It was chosen as the focus of this year’s parade for this reason.

THE Art Studio in Tarbert got off to a flying start on Saturday as Stuart Herd opened the doors on his new studio and picture framing business.

Stuart is a successful local artist who has exhibited in North Berwick, Aberdeen, Greenock and even Jamaica where he lived before moving to Tarbert. He will be holding a solo exhibition next year in The Archway in Lochgilphead.

Church of Scotland's Kirk at the head of Argyll Street, Lochgilphead was the venue for MAAA's concert on Saturday evening, given by Tim Kliphuis from Holland on violin and his Scottish partners, Nigel Clark on acoustic guitar and Roy Percy on bass.

Jazz seldom features on the MAAA's calendar, and the selection of this particular group was the perfect choice judging from the enthusiastic reception by a large audience more used to more classical renderings.

THE YOUNG winners of Ardfern’s Battle of the Bands enjoyed their first professional recording session on Sunday.

Mid Argyll band The Anyways beat off tough competition from six other bands in the under 18 category and scored the highest mark in the whole competition. Not a bad feat, considering they have only been together for 10 months.

THE GLASGOW based ‘Thistle Brass Quintet’ hit exactly the right note at the Mid Argyll Arts Association concert in Ardrishaig Hall last Saturday night, reaching out to music lovers of all tastes.

The music began in lively fashion with Bach’s famous Toccata and Fugue, before moving on to ‘Dances of the Scottish Court’ by contemporary composer John Maxwell Geddes.

ONE OF George Bernard Shaw’s most celebrated maxims was ‘He who can does. He who cannot teaches.’ Today we seem to have shortage of teachers but a plethora of advisers, consultants, managers and other ‘experts’. This exciting exhibition at the Archway Gallery, Lochgilphead, is the work of two retired art teachers, but they can certainly paint.

IT’S BEEN an impressive year for Ardfern-based fACTory in 2007, whose theatre workshops have become a prominent feature in the local arts scene.

The company received a start-up grant in 2006 and have been constantly developing ever since.

‘UTTERLY unique.’ That’s how the work of a Taynuilt artist has been described this week.

And the art in thread by Gerrie of Achbeag is now on show at The Dochas Gallery in Lochgilphead for the rest of this month.

ONCE again, Literature Across Frontiers in association with the Scottish Poetry Library and, this year, the Helicon Society for the Advancement of Poetry in Israel organised a fascinating evening of poetry readings by distinguished international poets at Crear on Thursday, August 9.

The six poets, who had never met before, were Valerie Gillies (the Edinburgh Makar), Robert Minhinnick from Wales and four from the Middle-East: Fatima Naoot from Egypt, Naim Araidi from Israel who is a bi-lingual Arab-Israeli, Amir Or from Israel (joint founder and editor-in-chief of the Helicon Society) and Seyhan Erözçelik from Turkey.

MEMBERS of the Mid Argyll Pipe Band are now putting the finishing touches to their show Blackwood & Hickory, the culmination of a year-long programme of workshops and rehearsals that has taken the band forward to a new chapter in its illustrious history.

CHOOSE Life are inviting the people of Mid Argyll to ‘choose life to the full’ during Suicide Awareness Week in September. The best way of protecting ourselves and our communities from the risk of suicide is to have things in life that sustain us and to know where to go to when we need help, so come along to Oban Corran Hall on September 8 and join Choose Life in celebrating and promoting life to the full.

AUTHORS Marian Pallister and David Adams McGilp were on hand at the Argyll Book Centre on Saturday to sign copies of their new book ‘Yesterday was Summer – the Marion Campbell Story’.

Marion Campbell of Kilberry was a fascinating woman who published more than eighty books before her death in 2000. There was talk of turning one of her novels, The Dark Twin, into a Hollywood movie around the time of her demise.

THIS year’s Ardfern and Craobh Haven Arts Festival opened with a preview of the Wavyline Gallery at Craignish Village Hall last Saturday.

FYNE Art Club’s recent annual exhibition held in Lochgilphead Community Centre last week proved popular with locals and tourists alike.

In its eighth year, the exhibition is the culmination of a years work by club members, as well as paintings by amateur and professional artists.

Craobh marina is the first port of call as West Highland Yachting Week celebrates its Diamond Jubilee this year.

The 60th anniversary of the regatta takes place from Friday July 27 until Friday August 3, and is the 28th year of sponsorship from Tennents – an unprecendented sponsorship partnership for any regatta. Over the five day event, the local economy is said to benefit from a boost of over £300,000 underpinning the importance of the event to the area.

THE eighth annual Fyne Art Club Open Summer Exhibition begins on Monday July 23 at 10am in the Community Centre, Manse Brae, Lochghilphead and runs until Saturday July 28 at 4pm.

This comprehensive and educational exhibition will display both professional and amateur works from artists in Mid Argyll and beyond.

CELIA Cameron and Valerie Marshall, joint winners of the Tayvallich Inn superCook challenge, were congratulated by celebrity chef Nick Nairn at Tarbert’s annual Seafood Festival last weekend.

Twenty entrants were whittled down to six finalists, all of whom prepared imaginative combinations of local produce and impressed the judges with clever food pairings and simple presentation.