Jeana

Jeana hails from the beautiful island of Orkney. In secondary school she joined a school fiddle group, Hadhirgann, run by Douglas Montgomery of Orkney duo ‘Saltfishforty’ and the band ‘The Chair’. This is what sparked Jeana’s love for traditional music.

Playing with Hadhirgann was great experience for Jeana. She played on the group’s Keep It Up CD and took part in the group’s appearance at the Scots Trad Music Awards at the Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh in December 2004 to great acclaim.
Jeana also toured Canada in June 2005 with Hadhirgann and The Kirkwall Grammar School Theatre Company in a production illustrating the cultural links between Orkney and Canada through the Hudson Bay Company, its Orkney-born Arctic authority Dr John Rae and the pioneering company agent Isobel Gunn.

Other performing experiences include numerous apperences, both solo and with groups, at Orkney Folk Festival, participating in the Tall Ships Race and its concert tour of Shetland, Norway and North England in summer 2005, with musicians from Shetland and Newcastle Upon Tyne University’s traditional music course with Chris Stout of Fiddlers’ Bid heading up as musical director.

2006 saw Jeana prefoming at Celtic Connections for the first time in Donald Shaws ‘Harvest’ project, an ‘Orkney Night with the Wrigley Sisters’, also playing alongside Kris Drever, Sarah MacFayden, ‘Saltfishfolrty’, and in the Celtic Connections Youth Orchestra playing pieces by Martynn Bennett and Dick Goghan.

Jeana is currently in her third at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow, studying for her BA in Scottish Music, where she received the Jimmy Shand Scholarship for a promising student joining the BA Scottish Music course with a first study in fiddle or accordion.

Jeana is also busy with teaching in and around Glasgow. She is a senior teacher for the RSAMD YouthWorks programme, along with teaching for Glasgow Fiddle Workshops, Glasgow Cultural Enterprises and Celtic Connections workshops throughout the year.