Nominated for ‘Best Duo’ at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards 2018. Ross Ainslie has also been nominated for ‘Musician of the Year’.

Winners of the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards ‘Best Duo’ 2017, Ross Ainslie and Ali Hutton, are internationally recognised multi-instrumentalists, composers and arrangers in the vibrant and ever evolving Scottish traditional music scene. In this performance at Kings Place, Ross and Ali will be showcasing new work from their eagerly awaited second album Symbiosis II, as they’re by Jenn Butterworth – one of the UK’s foremost folk guitarists in the acoustic music scene.

With a long history of shared musical roots from their days with the Vale of Atholl pipe band, at the age of twelve, they were mentored by one of the most innovative pipers in the last 30 years, the late great Gordon Duncan. Gordon sparked a deep passion in Ross and Ali for playing pipes with other instruments and they went on to be founding members of the musical powerhouse Treacherous Orchestra as well as playing with bands such as Old Blind Dogs, Salsa Celtica, Dougie Maclean, Shooglenifty, Zakir Hussain, The Levellers and Capercaillie.

Their individual and joint musical journeys have led them through a long list of high profile awards and nominations going back as far as 2005. In 2015 they saw prestigious acclaim in the Scots Trad Music Awards with Ali’s nomination for Instrumentalist of the Year; Treacherous Orchestra’s album Grind (co-produced by Ali) awarded Album of the Year; Ross awarded Composer of the Year. In 2016 their first album Symbiosis was shortlisted for Album of the Year in the Scots Trad Music Awards.

‘Ross Ainslie & Ali Hutton are superb musicians in their own right, but together create a sound that is even greater than the sum of its parts’ Bright Young Folk