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Describe the atmosphere and live music at a local pub, restaurant, festival, church or temple, club night.... inspire other people to check it out!
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Musician: Martin Taylor
Location: Kirkmichael, Scotland
Instruments: guitar
Music: Scottish / Jazz
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HOW I CAME TO THIS MUSICÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýWHERE I PLAYÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýA FAVOURITE SONG |
  
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 ÌýÌýListen (6'07) to 'Chez Fernand', performed by Martin Taylor and The Spirit of Django, from the album, Martin Taylor's Spirit of Django, (Linn Records, 1998)
ÌýÌýListen (2'05) to Martin Taylor talk about his music.
Where I Play:
One of my annual highlights is playing and running the Kirkmichael International Guitar Festival here in Ayreshire. The festival celebrates the guitar in all its diverse styles from classical, folk, rock and blues to jazz, bluegrass and Hawaiian music. We’ve had players from all over the world including Rajan Spolia from India.
It came about in 1999 when I was asked to crown the Gala Queen at a community event. There’s such a great community spirit here and it’s very important to me to be part of that. So what better way than through a music festival. The first year we had a marquee that held 300 people and it was so popular that now we’re up to 1000. Suddenly the whole place comes alive for the weekend. I’ve even had people say, ‘Could you turn it up, because we were sitting in the garden and we’d like the music a bit louder!'
 We use the profits from the festival to buy some guitars for the local primary school. The first year we had enough money to buy 4 guitars, and I personally bought another 2. At this stage, we’ve put something like 100 guitars into schools. This year we had over 30 children on stage at the festival who started playing guitar 3 years ago. I get a lump in my throat when I see them playing because they really put their all into it.
I love to play for people though I find the small audiences a bit nerve-wracking. Even though I’ve stood up on stage on my own at Carnegie Hall in New York and played for half an hour and there wasn’t a nerve in my body, when it comes to playing for a more intimate crowd, especially for people I know, I get really nervous.
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