"His tunes embrace every nuance of musical expression, including agonisingly beautiful album closer ‘Dynröst’, a tune that would wrest an emotional response from the hardest heart."
***** Songlines
Chris Stout’s family come from Fair Isle, one of the Shetland Isles, and he lived there till 1984 when he was eight years of age, and it was during those years that he started to acquire his love and deep knowledge of the Shetland fiddle tradition first becoming aware of the fiddle at the age of three. His family then moved to the South Mainland of Shetland and he lived and was educated there, until his last three years at school which he spent at the music school of Douglas Academy in Glasgow. Throughout these formative years he combined playing classical music at a high standard with traditional music, playing initially at home with his father who plays accordion, and later with other young musicians who were mainly fiddle players and were given the name Fiddlers’ Bid. His ability to play both traditional and classical music led to a memorable achievement in 1990 when Chris won both Shetland’s ‘Young Fiddler of the Year’ and Shetland’s ‘Young Musician of the Year’ competitions.
After that he spent five years at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama graduating after three years not in traditional music, but with a degree in classical violin. His remarkable technical ability on the instrument, which enables him at all times to express with passion and precision exactly what he wants to convey, dates from those years. He had also developed a keen interest in electro-acoustic music and spent a postgraduate year studying this followed by a Masters Degree in the same topic. Indeed one of his first compositions combined this interest with his other major love, traditional music. Shetland Dawn combined traditional Shetland music with bird song. Another of his electro-acoustic pieces was written in 2002 for saxophonist Phil Bancroft and performed on a UK tour titled ‘Double Helix’.
A BBC commission for fiddle and orchestra, 'Dynröst' was performed by Chris, members of his Quintet and the BBC Scotttish Symphony Orchestra in the City Halls as part of a concert at the Celtic Connections Festival in 2007. The new album has two tunes on it which formed part of that commission and have been re-arranged for the quintet: the title track 'Devils Advocate' and a slow air called 'Dynröst'.
Chris is an energetic musician who thrives on varying challenges. As well as his quintet he is a founder member of Shetland band Fiddlers Bid and has performed with groups such as the Finlay MacDonald Band, Salsa Celtica, John Rae’s Celtic Feet, Colin Steele’s Stramash, and the Graham Stephens Sextet, the last three of these bands somewhat closer to jazz than traditional acoustic music.
Chris is fascinated by the way different cultures approach music. He was involved in the Orquestra Scotland Brasil 2003 collaboration and has appeared frequently in Japan with Catriona McKay. He has worked extensively with Susanne Lundeng of Norway, a collaboration that is often re-visited.