About The Project

Scottish Music Festival

The Aim of the Festival, which will run from Thursday 24th August until Sunday 3rd September 2023, is to celebrate Scottish Folk and Traditional Music in all its contemporary glory in a land that boasts the most populous cities in the world yet is nearly entirely untouched by Scottish Music.

Five Bands will be selected to represent the cutting edge of Scottish Music who complement each other and are ambassadors for their craft, their culture and their country. With an expected audience of 30,000 concert goers and a potential direct advertising reach of over 1 Million people the scope and potential for the project is enormous.

The five groups will assemble at the start of the project for a grand opening concert; this will likely be in Beijing or Shijiazhuang in Hebei Province. This will then be followed by each band embarking on their own tour, before all bands congregate for one final stramash at the end of the festival.

How did it all begin?

A China - Scotland alliance

Scotia Arts from Scotland and JoyTitan Entertainment from China first starting working together in 2009, when Scotia Arts’ Director Blair Parham toured China as Director of a youth orchestra; the tour was organised and managed by JoyTitan.
In 2012/13 Blair, now Director of the Scottish Fiddle Orchestra, took that organisation on a tour of China again cooridinated by JoyTitan. Through several years of discussion and planning, a seed was planted to take professional groups from Scotland to China for performance tours. This seed grew and blossomed in to the Scottish Music Festival which was due to take place in Autumn 2020, but due to COVID-19 will take place for the first time in Autumn 2024.

A Country wide festival....

Stretching from Kunming in the South Western Province of Yunnan, which borders Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam to the North East Cities of Dalian and Yingkou in Liaoning Province which borders North Korea, the festival spans thousands of miles.

We will be visiting several of the more well known cities like Shanghai and Beijing, but also “New Tier 1” and “Tier 2” Cities like Dalian and Shijiazhuang respectively.

The populations of some of these ‘smaller’ cities is still staggering… indeed Shijiazhuang has a population of around 12 million people!

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SFO promo
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Founded in 2017 by Music Director, Educator and Festival Producer Blair Parham, Scotia Arts brings Music from around the World to Scotland whilst taking music from Scotland around the World.
The Company is responsible for a growing number of Arts Projects in its portfolio in Scotland and overseas.
These include the Stirling Bridge International Arts Festival and the Land o’ Burns Fiddle Weekend.
2020 saw Scotia Arts found the Scottish Music Academy – an online resource for instrumentalists to learn Scottish music from the best!
Scotia Arts also helps to market and promote overseas festivals working with its partners including the Croatia International Jazz Fest and the Mountain Spring Festival in Canada.
In 1999, JoyTitan was founded in Shijiazhuang City. For 20 years, they have focused on bringing together art from around the world to China. They not only show Chinese audiences the wonderful performances from all over the world, but they also enable countless artists to learn more about China through performing there.
Their philosophy is to showcase overseas acts to the greatest number of people possible by making the concerts they produce cost-effective for all. They pay close attention to feedback, have a strict contractual spirit, and abide by their commitments.

They respect the arts, and gain in-depth understanding of the technical details of the theaters and venues in advance, selectively providing lighting, sound, translation, stage supervision, staff and equipment to ensure 100% artistic and audience enjoyment.