Alec Sim’s Scottish Septet
Alec Sim has lived in his native Aberdeen for the greater part of his life and has been playing the violin for as long as he can remember. He disagrees with advocates of the bagpipe, claiming that the fiddle is the true national instrument of Scotland. He has played his own violin before the King and Queen at Balmoral, has appeared at Queen’s Hall, London, was violinist in Lena Ashwell’s first Scottish Firing-Line Concert Party which toured the North of France for two months during the Great War, was for several years leader of the now defunct Aberdeen University Orchestra, and is now conductor of the Aberdeen Strathspey and Reel Society. His Septet is a permanent combination consisting entirely of strings. Sim is critical of the older generation of Scottish fiddlers. “You know how the old fiddler sawed up and murdered our music”, he says. “We are trying to get away from this and to play it with the same care that one would play Bach or Beethoven.”
Scottish Dance Music BBC Radio Times for 7 August 1939.