Isla Ratcliff
Concert: Saturday 21 November
7:30pm - 10pm @ The Pleasance Theatre, Edinburgh
Isla will be joined by a stellar line-up of Graham Mackenzie (2nd fiddle), Emma Tomlinson (viola), Natalie Haas (cello), Charlie Stewart (double bass) and Iona Reid (piano).
Workshops:
Isla Ratcliff - Saturday 10am - Ochil Room
Tradifying Vivaldi (Advanced): Tunes from Isla’s The Scottish Four Seasons.
Graham MacKenzie - Saturday 10am - Pentland Room
Cape Breton Tunes (Intermediate +): Strathspeys and reels with a focus on bowing and ornamentation.
Emma Tomlinson - Saturday 12pm - Ochil Room
How to Play Trad Viola (Intermediate): Learn viola friendly tunes and how to adapt tunes for viola.
Natalie Haas - Saturday 2pm - Ochil Room
Cello Accompaniment (Intermediate +): How to add groove and chordal backing from a cellist’s perspective.
Fiddle player, singer and composer Isla Ratcliff is a passionate and inventive musician from Edinburgh, Scotland. With the release of her first two albums, The Castaliain (2021) and The Scottish Four Seasons (2025), Isla has been receiving increasing attention for her fiery fiddle playing and her rich singing voice. She was nominated for Musician of the Year 2025 at the MG Alba Scots Trad Music Awards, and she was a Semi-Finalist in the BBC Young Traditional Musician of the Year 2022 competition. She has toured across Scotland, the UK and Europe, including at Celtic Connections, Festival Interceltique de Lorient, Cambridge Folk Festival, Sidmouth Folk Week, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, SEALL Festival of Small Halls, the BBC Proms, and festivals in France, Germany and Denmark.
Isla’s newest album The Scottish Four Seasons (2025) is a Scottish trad reimagining of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. Released in 2025 to mark the 300th anniversary of the work's original publication, Isla’s album highlights the dance-like nature of Vivaldi's music and reflects on how Scotland's seasons and climate have changed in the past 300 years. Featuring Isla on fiddle, accompanied by a stellar line-up of string ensemble and piano, this contemporary Scottish folk interpretation of a 300-year-old classic crosses the genre boundaries of classical and folk music and highlights important environmental concerns.
Isla’s debut album The Castalia (2021) features traditional and self-composed tunes inspired by the 4 months that she spent in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada in 2019. Described as ‘quite the best debut album that has come this way in a long time’ (The Living Tradition), her album expresses her love for the tradition, its ethos of community, and the power of music to bring people together. Isla is a graduate of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (MMus Scottish Music, 2020) and the University of Oxford (BA Music, 2017). As a child, she received her musical education first on classical violin and piano through the Suzuki Method and then at the City of Edinburgh Music School at Broughton High School. Aged 13, she played a trad duet with Nicola Benedetti in Edinburgh’s Usher Hall.