Edinburgh Tradfest: Simon Thoumire & Dave Milligan

Simon Thoumire and Dave Milligan’s duo performances have a unique blend of virtuoso musicianship and rapport that comes from working together for almost 25 years.

Simon is a renowned and award-winning virtuoso concertina player, and has performed with guitarist Ian Carr, Seannachie, and John McCusker among many others. Dave Milligan is a genre-defying pianist who has played with Karine Polwart, String Sisters, Bachué, Stramash and The Unusual Suspects.

Together, Simon Thoumire and Dave Milligan create dazzling, quirky arrangements of reels, jigs, strathspeys, and airs from their native Scottish tradition, and beyond. They take traditional repertoire mostly from their first two albums, The Big Day In and Third Flight Home and also explore self-penned music as featured on their new album, Portraits.

The duo’s performances are a testament to their technical skill and musical creativity, and their albums are a must-listen for anyone interested in Scottish music.

“Influenced by traditional melodies, [Thoumire & Miligan] do not follow the dance tune form but are structurally more adventurous, with sections looping into each other often underpinned by spicy chords, as likely to have been influenced by McCoy Tyner as Violet Tulloch.

“Such is his command of the idiom, one of Thoumire’s [pieces] could have been written by a Gow or Marshall, which leads one to speculate that he might well be seen in the same light in years to come… overtones from both instruments melding beautifully, and underlining that however unlikely the combination of instruments, music is music.” – Edinburgh Music Review

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The Traverse Theatre is funded by Creative Scotland and The City of Edinburgh Council.

If you have access requirements, please contact our Sales and Welcome Team on boxoffice@traverse.co.uk or 0131 228 1404 so we can arrange reserved seating for you and discuss how else we can best support your visit.