Published: Wednesday, 9th December, 2009 2:24pm

Keatinge on song at music awards

AN accordion player from the Borders was on song at one of the country's biggest music awards - despite missing out on the star prize.

Twenty-year-old Chris Keatinge, who regularly gigs around the region, was short-listed as a finalist in the BBC Radio 2 Young Folk Award 2010 which was announced last week.

However, the prize went to James Findlay, a 20-year-old singer, guitarist and fiddle player from Dorset. It includes a session for a Radio 2 show and slots on the bill at three of the UK's most prestigious festivals - the Cambridge Folk Festival, Fairport's Cropredy Convention and Towersey Village Festival.

Keatinge has been playing the button accordion for 15 years now, under the tutorage of Ian Lowthian. In 2005, he won the Rotary Club's Young Musician of the Year and, in 2006, finalist in the BBC Radio Scotland's Young Traditional Musician of the Year.

Since then he has performed across Scotland with the TMSA Young Trad Tour 2006 as part of Harris Playfair's Coel Mor at the Aberdeen International Festival and most recently as part of the Border Tunesmiths, a collaborative project and concert of nine Borders musicians.

Highlights from the final, which includes performances by each of the six finalists, can be heard in an extended edition of Mike Harding's Radio 2 show tonight - Wednesday, December 9 - at 7pm.