SEALL Presents…The Festival of Small Halls 2026 Opening Concert – Dunvegan Community Hall
November 19 @ 7:00 pm
Date: Thursday 19 November 2026
Time: 7pm
Venue: Dunvegan Community Hall
Presented by: SEALL
Seating: Unreserved
Festival of Small Halls 2026
From 19 to 28 November, Festival of Small Halls will travel across Skye, Raasay and Lochalsh, bringing world class musicians into some of the region’s best loved village halls and community spaces.
First launched by SEALL in 2018, the festival was created to bring exceptional live music into the heart of island communities during the quieter months. Since then, it has grown into a much loved annual event.
Line-up
All eight artists will play this event.
Alice Allen
Alice is known for her careful curation of lesser-known works, bringing neglected or forgotten music to life with clarity, expression, and musical intelligence. Her playing has taken her to the BBC Proms, the Wigmore Hall, Europe and India and she has performed extensively across TV and film.
Alice performs in dynamic world music trio Lyre and in highly regarded duo Strathspey Queens, with fiddler Patsy Reid. A sought-after collaborator with artists such as Hannah Peel, Arun Sood, Corto Alto. She has performed on over 100 records to date, bringing depth, sensitivity, and a distinctive voice to every project.
Lauren Collier
Lauren is a Scottish fiddle player and singer, whose music brings together Scottish traditional music with traditions from around the world. Originally from Ayrshire, now based in Glasgow, she is recognised for her expressive fiddle playing, captivating vocals and distinctive arrangements that balance tradition with contemporary creativity.
A graduate of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland’s Traditional Music Master’s programme, Lauren was nominated for Up and Coming Artist of the Year at the 2024 MG ALBA Scots Trad Music Awards. Her debut album, Uddevalla, was inspired by musical traditions from Sweden, Haiti, India, Indonesia and Greece. Lauren’s music celebrates cultural similarities and differences and includes traditional songs and melodies, original compositions and contemporary arrangements.
Alongside her own music, Lauren has also contributed to several series of Outlander and Outlander: Blood of My Blood. She has performed throughout the UK and internationally, creating immersive performances that connect audiences through tradition, sharing culture and storytelling.
Kris Drever
Kris is among Scotland’s most acclaimed and distinctive contemporary musicians, celebrated for his warm voice, virtuosic guitar playing and unique songwriting voice. Raised in the Orkney Islands, Drever has carved out a unique place at the intersection of traditional folk and modern acoustic music, as a solo artist and as one third of the award-winning trio Lau.
Over the course of his career, Kris has won numerous awards, including BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards for Best Singer, Best Original Song, and Best Group with Lau. His solo work combines lyrics of depth and authenticity with expertly pitched arrangements, exploring themes of place, identity, and social change, delivered with clarity, compassion, and poetic insight.
Fergus McCreadie
Blending jazz with the spirit of Scottish folk, pianist Fergus McCreadie crafts music inspired by his homeland’s breath-taking landscapes. His sound transcends genre, connecting deeply with audiences worldwide.
Recorded in a remote cottage in North Uist, in the Outer Hebrides, Fergus’s latest album ‘The Shieling’ (Edition Records) drew on the wild, elemental beauty of the surroundings to create a deeper sense of space and openness that proved an immediate success with critics and audience alike.
Fergus also made his film score debut in 2025, with a significant contribution to the soundtrack of Spike Lee’s film ‘Highest 2 Lowest’ starring Denzel Washington & A$AP Rocky, which the trio recorded at the Manhattan Centre in New York. A huge champion of Fergus’s music, Spike Lee also used Fergus’s song ‘Windshelter’ in a tribute video to Carmelo Anthony filmed for his induction into the NBA Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
Following their biggest UK & EU tour to date in Autumn 2025, which included a sold out headline show at Union Chapel as part of the EFG London Jazz Festival, 2026 sees Fergus’s debut performances in Japan at Blue Note’s iconic Cotton Club Tokyo, as well as a return to his roots with a Scottish Highlands Tour. Fergus will also embark on new collaborations with violinist Donald Grant as well as larger chamber ensembles under his remit as Chamber Music Scotland’s Artist in Residence for 2025/26.
Released to instant critical acclaim, Fergus’s 2022 album ‘Forest Floor’ (Edition Records) catapulted him into the international spotlight. The album topped the UK Jazz & Blues charts, prompted sold-out performances across the UK, praise from BBC 6Music, The Times, NME and earned him a 2022 Mercury Prize shortlist nomination, the 2022 Jazz FM Instrumentalist of the Year Award as well as the 2022 Scottish Album of the Year Award – the first jazz artist ever to be awarded the prize.
Fergus McCreadie is an official Yamaha Artist, and Chamber Music Scotland’s Artist in Residence 2025/26.
Pàdruig Morrison
Pàdruig is an acclaimed accordionist and composer from Grimsay in Uist in the Outer Hebrides. A 2020 finalist in the BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year, and a founding member of Beinn Lee, Pàdruig’s music is a powerful, innovative voice connecting his Gaelic heritage with new compositional horizons.
Pàdruig released his debut solo album this January, comprising of entirely self-penned music and original Gaelic songs. Buin is an exploration and deep reflection of connections to place, history, culture, and the Gaelic language.
Equally comfortable in the world of classical composition – gaining a PhD in composition in 2024, exploring the synthesis of Scottish traditional music and contemporary classical composition – he has written music for the National Trust for Scotland, the St Magnus International Festival, and for members of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. His debut solo album Buin is deeply rooted in the traditional Gaelic music that feels most like home to Pàdruig.
Rachel Sermanni
Rachel is a Scottish based singer/songwriter that makes the mundane moments mystical: shock-positive pregnancy tests in train-station toilets, coffee machine breakages, cold river swims, the regret of not saying ‘I love You’, the moon & how it pulls, bare feet on wood floors, the soft glow of a house plant, ‘what even is consciousness?’, strange dreams lingering in quiet mornings…
She brims with dreamy indie-folk pop that speaks of the struggle and desire to Flow, to love, to live, to feel. Sometimes, her songs speak of the rare moments of quiet-still, found in the midst of this struggle & desire.
Rachel’s most recent offering is her 4th studio album : Dreamer Awake. An in depth assortment of playful and candid vignettes, peeping into life: after birth, after separation and in the wake of recognising the internalised conditionings of patriarchy. She seeks to be honest with herself and her environment. She seeks to express from this raw place. She seeks to speak from the descent, the plateaus, the dream-catchings and contemplations of womanhood. There are no conclusions to be drawn. It is a call to arms, of sorts, to wake up and dream the future, to dismiss the external for a minute and tend to the inner landscape of heart and mind. To not be distracted. To focus on the light and the shadow in equal measure.
Since the release of Dreamer Awake, Rachel has become a mother for the second time and continues to explore this experience while offering her songs and also her insights into creativity.
Adam Sutherland
Adam Sutherland tunes are played all over the world.
‘The Road to Errogie’ has been recorded on over fifty albums so far. Some of folk music’s biggest names have featured this tune, most recently Irish supergroup ‘Biird’ as part of their Ed Sheeran stadium tour support slot.
Other tunes that are making their merry way around the world include ‘Trip to the Market’, ‘Last Train from Lanark’, ‘Sushi 7/8’ and many more. These have taken off in places that include Australia, Japan, Europe and North America.
On stage, Adam has become very well known from touring with well loved bands such as Session A9, Treacherous Orchestra, Peatbog Faeries, Nae Plans, Croft no. Five and Emma Tomlinson.
Adam is also a highly sought after teacher of Scottish Fiddle music. He’s been invited to teach at camps all across America, Canada, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.
Adam has been described as “highly empathic, warm and encouraging…” He also, somehow, seems to think that he is funny.
Ailis Sutherland
Ailis Sutherland is a piper from Kirriemuir.
Taught by her father at the kitchen table, she has gone on to perform across the UK, and in Europe, Asia, the USA and Australia with various bands and projects, most recently as part of the Finlay MacDonald Band. Ailis has featured in a range of high-profile events, including performing on the runway at the Dior Cruise 2025 Fashion Show, for the Van Cleef & Arpels Fleurs d’Hawaï Launch, and an Abbey Road Studios recording session for video game soundtrack. She was featured in a Sky Arts documentary where she was filmed playing pipes in the crown of Stirling’s iconic Wallace Monument and performed at the table read for Outlander Season 8 in 2024. She took to the stage at Edinburgh’s Hogmanay 2024, to perform ‘Common People’ with 90s Britpop legends Pulp.
Ailis is also a World Pipe Band Champion, having won the Grade 1 title with Shotts & Dykehead Caledonia Pipe Band in 2015, and a finalist in the BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician Award (2023). She holds a First Class Honours degree in Applied Music from the University of the Highlands and Islands, where she also studied wooden flute with acclaimed Glenuig musician Iain MacDonald.
Nominated for MG ALBA’s Up & Coming Artist Award in 2019 for her work with Hecla, Ailis has collaborated with a wide array of artists and ensembles, such as GRIT Orchestra, Croft No. Five, Brìghde Chaimbeul, Kathleen MacInnes and Allan MacDonald. She has also appeared with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra (RSNO), the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and as part of a PRS Foundation/Chamber Music Scotland performance with Maxwell Quartet.
Ailis went freelance full time in 2025, having built a reputation as an experienced and committed music educator alongside her performance career. With 12 years of teaching experience, she has worked with students of all ages and stages across the world. In her previous role as Clubs Producer at the National Piping Centre, Ailis developed community-based education projects, that create accessible pathways for children to learn Scotland’s national instrument.
Her teaching portfolio also includes piping programmes with the University of Glasgow, University of Edinburgh, the Royal Guard of Oman, the Royal Oman Police and the Indonesian Defence University. Ailis regularly delivers workshops and classes with cultural organisations including Fèis Rois, Fèis Bharraigh, Fèis Tìr an Eòrna, Scots Music Group and Far North Retreats, as well as with the Italian Spring School (Pisa/Bologna, Italy), Sychrov Piping Seminar (Prague, Czech Republic), Celtic Arts Foundation (Washington, USA) and Càirdeas (Vermont, USA).
This year’s festival
Alongside the evening concerts, the festival will include informal pub sessions, workshops in schools and performances in care settings, bringing musicians out into communities across the region and making the festival about much more than the main stage.
Festival of Small Halls 2026 is supported by Creative Scotland, Bòrd na Gàidhlig, Culture & Business Scotland and Torabhaig Distillery.
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Tickets on sale now.