With Celtfest less than a month away, one of the stars of the line up is to hold a workshop with a group of young musicians in order to produce a piece of work to perform at the festival.

Scots whistle player Hamish Napier is travelling to the island to compose a new piece of music with the young folk group, Scran.

The new composition will then be played alongside the main performance of Hamish’s masterpiece body of work, ’The River’ at the new-look Celtfest when he appears there in July.

The trip has been organised by Culture Vannin, and the Manx music development officer Chloe Woolley hopes that he and Scran, the youth group who formed from the youth music service Bree and who’s average age is 16, will blend Scots and Manx trad music together to create a fitting piece to prelude the performance of ’The River’.

’His visit is a precursor to the performance of Hamish’s highly-acclaimed piece of music, The River,’ she said.

’It will be performed at Yn Chruinnaght’s Celtfest Isle of Man by a star-studded ensemble of top Scottish trad musicians.

’The new work, which will be created with Scran this weekend, will then be performed alongside The River on Wednesday 12th July at the Centenary Centre, Peel.’

He has already prepared some music to get the project started, and during the workshops he is going to be encouraging the musicians from Scran to create their own pieces of music.

’They will all play them onstage together at Celtfest.’

Hamish wrote and premiered the River, his debut album, to rapturous applause at the 2016 Celtic Connections festival, held in Glasgow.

Since then it has been nominated for many awards, most notably Composer Of The Year and Album Of The Year at the Scots Trad Awards 2016.

His visit to the island is sponsored by the Steam Packet and the Isle of Man Arts Council.

Celtfest, takes place between July 11 and 15, and also features Talisk, Connla, Rioghnach Connolly. Rachel hair and Professor Alice Roberts. Tickets are £12.50, with £15 for Connla.

For more information, visit celtfest.im