About Glasgow Mandolin Retreat
Laura-Beth Salter and Ethan Setiawan present the Glasgow Mandolin Retreat; a weekend of mandolin workshops in Glasgow, the heart of traditional music in Scotland. The Glasgow Mandolin Retreat is an opportunity to study with renowned mandolinists from around the world in a variety of musical traditions - Scottish trad, bluegrass, jazz, old time, and more! The weekend culminates in a concert at the National Piping Centre, featuring all the tutors.
Laura-Beth Salter
Artistic director
A well kent face on the Glasgow Folk and Roots scene, mandolinist, tutor, singer and composer Laura-Beth is a founding member of award-winning folk bands The Shee & Kinnaris Quintet. She was nominated for the MG Alba Composer of the year award in 2013 after the success of her Celtic Connections commission and debut album ‘Breathe.’ She is an active tutor of mandolin and youth projects all over the UK.
Hailing from Lincolnshire, her parents immersed LB in a diverse range of musical influences from an early age. They ran a local session which lead to Laura-Beth’s background in Old-time, Bluegrass and roots music. Feeling a desire to progress further, she moved to Newcastle to study the mandolin and composition on the Folk Music Degree, where she discovered a love for exploring traditional music from all over the world, and met her fellow band members in The Shee.
After university, LB toured extensively as a dep in Frigg and Shooglenifty, and moved to her now hometown, Glasgow. Years of sessioning in a musical melting pot, she’s now involved in a range of performance, composition and teaching projects within the Scottish traditional music scene – The Shee , VOX , Jenn & Laura-Beth, Kinnaris Quintet, The Daddy Naggins, & From The Ground.
Ethan Setiawan
Artistic director
Originally from Goshen, Indiana, Ethan Setiawan tried out numerous instruments before finding his way to the mandolin. Years later, Setiawan has a command of the instrument far beyond his twenty-five years, and has won both the National Mandolin Championship at Winfield, KS and the Rockygrass Mandolin Championship. On his album, “Gambit”, Setiawan takes the calculated musical risks of a seasoned player. He moves aptly between stylistic influences, harkening back to the experimental string band music pioneered in the early 80s while presenting entirely original compositions.
As a teen, Setiawan began driving to Chicago to take lessons with Don Stiernberg, and travelled to California to attend The Mandolin Symposium. After finishing high school, he attended Berklee College of Music on a full scholarship. “I think I came into Berklee as a very technically oriented musician, but just being exposed to so many different styles and incredible musicians really broadened my musical horizons, and gave me a deeper understanding of artistry and musicality beyond technical proficiency”, he explains.
Since then, his path has wended its way through traditional bluegrass, to Bach partitas, to free jazz. His debut full-length album, “Flux” is made up of original tunes drawing from all these wells. In retrospect, Setiawan can see immense growth in himself since the release of “Flux”. “I can look at most of those tunes and point you back to a Matt Flinner tune or a Bela Fleck tune that I drew inspiration from, but it feels more like a school project to me, something that I set out to do with a specific goal in mind, whereas “Gambit” feels more like my own artistic statement.”