A contemporary of The Beatles and the Rolling Stones, Donovan is known to generations of music lovers for his guitar playing and his passionate concern for the environment and search for spiritual awareness and knowledge.
Donovan, who recently released Beat Café, his first new CD in eight years and is currently writing his autobiography, was presented with his award by John Steven of Sennheiser UK, before a 500 strong crowd at Glasgow's Radisson SAS hotel. This year's Tartan Clefs, traditionally a highlight in the Scottish music industry's calendar, raised £130,000 for Nordoff-Robbins, Scotland's first music therapy charity and saw the glittering crowd party until the wee hours of the morning.
Other recipients of the Scottish music industry's highest accolades included recently reformed Wet, Wet, Wet; glam rockers The Darkness, former Simple Minds manager Bruce Findlay, crooner Edwyn Collins and teenage violin virtuoso Nicola Benedetti. Music is central to the work of Nordoff-Robbins, which has long been supported by the Scottish music industry. Developed 45 years ago by Dr Paul Nordoff, a composer and pianist and Clive Robbins, a teacher, it explores the use of music as a communication tool and helps more than 200 Scottish adults and children with a wide range of special needs including emotional and behavioural problems, learning disabilities, rehabilitation and physical illness.
The charity operates therapy centres in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dunfermline and employs eight full time music therapists whose outreach work takes them to schools, health care centres and community projects across the country. It also works to provide a university music therapy training course.
(Sarah Rushton - Read)
