An arts festival celebrating Paisley’s heritage and history has got underway.
A series of events including theatre performances, live music, spoken word poetry, storytelling workshops and history talks takes place at some of the town’s best-loved venues.
The Tannahill Arts Festival is organised by pianist Toni James and composer Alan Fleming Baird and returns with a bigger and better line-up.
“We’re growing year on year and we hope to keep that going,” said Toni.
It’s a cross-arts festival that started in 2019 and continued throughout the pandemic in a digital format; this year it has received funding and support from OneRen and Future Paisley.
Alan, who is based in Paisley and wrote Tannahill – The Opera, which told the story of poet Robert Tannahill, staged in Paisley Abbey back in 2019, explained his motivation behind setting up the festival.
He said: “When I grew up here I saw things like Scottish Opera, Scottish Ballet, the Royal Shakespeare Company on tour and I felt that there is now a gap of those kinds of things coming to the town and so I thought if I could raise some money and a profile for the festival, I can bring acts into the town and platform people that are already here.”
And he says it’s putting Paisley on the map as a top gig destination.
He continued: “Every time I invite someone to Paisley, they gig again, because they say, ‘Oh, I didn’t know about this venue', because we’ve got iconic venues like The Bungalow and the Abbey. Once these artists have been once, they come back because it is such a great place to perform.”
This year’s edition of the festival has attracted some outstanding names in the music scene, including Tommy Smith, who fought to establish the first full-time jazz course in Scotland, and in 2019 was given an OBE for services to jazz from Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. He kicked things off on Friday night.
Headlining on the Saturday is Seonaid Aitken, who has been named ‘best vocalist’ twice at the Scottish Jazz Awards and who has played with the Orchestra of Scottish Opera for 22 years.
Alan said: “We have Seonaid performing on Saturday and Tommy Smith performing on Friday in Paisley Abbey.
“We’ve got what are probably the best musicians in Scotland coming to Paisley this weekend and I’m very excited to see musicians of their calibre coming to the town.”
The festival runs until Saturday, April 2. For more information, visit https://www.tannahillarts.com
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