George’s fiddling on fire at Burns competition

Published on Friday 4 May 2012 Ellon Times

A TARVES student has reason to be proud, after being awarded a prestigious title on the basis of his skills with the fiddle.

15-year old George Davidson competed at the Scottish Young Burnsian 2012 competition last Saturday, taking the overall Young Burnsian 2012 prize for his talented fiddling.

The competition pitted him against more than a hundred thousand representatives from secondary schools all over Scotland, in an annual celebration of Scottish culture and heritage. George wowed judges with a selection of Scottish music performed on the fiddle.

The award isn’t the first for the Meldrum Academy student, however – he won the Junior Burnsian award in 2008, and has two cabinets full of silverware from other competitions he has taken part in.

“I started playing the fiddle when I was nine,” he told the Times. “Our teachers picked out some of us who showed an interest, I discovered that I was good at it, and took it from there. I also inherited an interest in Burns and his works from my late grandfather, Jonathan Davidson.

“The great thing about Burns in the modern day is how widely known and respected his works are, right across the world.”

Proud mum Carolyn told the Times that the victory was a fantastic reward for the hard work George puts into his music.