Tune Up - Music Touring Across Scotland

Tune up: Battlefield Band and Uzbekistan Musicians

Voted 'Best Live Act' at the Scottish Traditional Music Awards, the Battlefield Band has been on the road for 35 years, and now on tour in a new collaboration with superbly talented and like- minded musicians from Uzbekistan...

Named after the Glasgow suburb of Battlefield, where the group was formed by four student friends, Battlefield Band has been on the world's roads for 35 years touring throughout Germany, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Holland, Syria, Jordan, India, Sri Lanka, Egypt, U.S.A., Canada, Uzbekistan and the UK.

Inspired by their rich heritage of Celtic music and fired by the strength and vibrancy of today's Scottish cultural scene, Battlefield Band mixes old songs and music with a new self-penned repertoire, all played on a fusion of ancient and modern instruments including, bagpipes, fiddle, synthesiser, guitar, flutes, bodhran and accordion.

For this tour, Battlefield Band will be performing with four traditional Uzbek musicians they met while on tour in 2003. Like their Scottish counterparts they are masters of their traditional instruments but with music that is a mixture of traditional and modern influences. The Uzbek musicians are all colleagues, teaching and playing at the Conservatoire in Tashkent. When the two groups first met they naturally began to play each other's music, exploring and exploiting the differences as well as the unexpected similarities. The collaboration with Battlefield Band enables the Uzbek musicians to visit Scotland for the first time and could not have happened without the support of the Tune Up, bringing new sounds and musical experimentation and celebration to audiences in Scotland.

Mix these great musicians and instruments together, highlight these two vibrant traditions, add top class dancers and you get an exciting, exotic, and most important of all, entertaining mosaic of east and west under one banner - On the Great Silk Road.