calum Mcilroy 

 
 
 

Calum McIlroy, Radio Scotland’s 2024 Young Traditional Musician, is a Guitarist, Mandolin Player and Singer from Aberdeenshire. After graduating from the BMus Traditional Music course at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, he released his debut EP, This Ill Deeds (2020), and was nominated for the Citty Finlayson Scots Singer of the Year Award at the MG ALBA Scots Trad Music Awards.

As well as performing in a trio with Megan MacDonald (accordion) and Chloë Bryce (fiddle) - winners of the Battle of the Folk Bands at Celtic Connections 2024 - he has appeared alongside the likes of Mike VassAnna Massie (Blazin’ Fiddles); Ross Ainslie & Ali Hutton; and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.

We first met Calum in 2018 when he came to visit the workshop while on holiday with his family in Fife. He was looking for a new mandolin at the time and was immediately drawn to a Spruce and Scottish Sycamore Springwell which was in the workshop and available. Rory gave Calum the mandolin to take home to try, and the rest as they say is history.

I was an early recipient of something similar to the Young Player Bursary and that was a huge help in me acquiring an instrument of this quality. Its an absolute dream to be able to own it, play it and work with it all the time. This year I won the BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the year. I think I was the first mandolin player in its history to be able to do that and I don’t think I would have been able to do it quite the same without this instrument.

-Calum McIlroy, 2024