We have been nominated for a 2009 Canadian Folk Music Award - Young Performer of the Year category!

Well, the summer is definately now over...  We have to a few moments to thank the people that helped make this an unforgettable summer!

The summer started well, with the release of our debut CD "Relative Minors" on July 10th!  We should thank Canada Disc & Tape and especially Wendy Wall, for getting everything ready for us on time! Great job!

First we need to thank Doug Cox, artistic director and all-around head honcho of the Vancouver Island Music Fest, for believing in us and inviting us to perform at the festival this summer.  It was our first BIG folk festival and it was AMAZING!  We got to be a part of a festival that had performers like Earl Scruggs, Taj Mahal, Bela Fleck, The Wailers, and sooo many more amazing world class acts... a huge THANK YOU to Doug!

We also want to thank the Islands Folk Festival for inviting us to a part of that event, for taking good care of us and making us feel at home!  THANKS!

Our next thank you goes to the ABERDEEN INTERNATIONAL YOUTH FESTIVAL (and especially Jenny Phillips, Ruth Fisher and Millie Fawcet)  for inviting us to participate in this fabulous festival!  We met some incredible people, some outstanding talents and made lifelong friends!  You kept us busy for a week with performances every day, all varied and exciting and all handled in a very professional way!  We will forever remember our performance at the Aberdeen Music Hall, as well as the Fraserburgh concert and the "posh" Trades Hall concert!  We had a blast!  (even though it rained every single day we were in Scotland!)

An enormous THANK YOU goes to Brian Milne and SPEYFEST! What a great festival! and nice people to boot!  You took such good care of us, setting us up in a lovely home,  the food... everything!  We were thrilled to meet Lau and the Red Hot Chili Pipers and the rest of the performers were also amazing!  We enjoyed our performances there, including the one at Baxter's... (we have discovered that our local grocery store carries Baxter's soup... ) We definately want to go back to SPEYFEST! 

OK, the last festival we need to thank is FEAKLE FESTIVAL in Co. Clare, Ireland! And an especially huge thank you goes to Festival Director, Gary Pepper  who was also extremely generous and kind and invited us to be a part of this important annual event!  We enjoyed all the sessions and particularly the ones at "Pepper's Bar"!  It was great meeting Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill, but equally amazing was meeting the many local musicians (especially Seamus Bagly).

Thank you to Gus O'Connors Pub in Doolin (Ireland), and to Molly's Pub in Mallorca (Spain) for being so generous with your food & drink - we're definately coming back!  

We enjoyed meeting and sharing music with so many musicians while in Ireland especially Hugh Healy!  The highlight of our trip to Mallorca, Spain was meeting Pere Joan (PJ) aka Tinwhistler on Youtube!  We'd been Youtube friends for a while and being able to jam together was amazing! 

Last but not least we should thank our parents for their support and encouragement and especially dad for driving (on the wrong side of the road) all through Ireland in search of the ultimate music session - we went to as many as 3 pub sessions in a day, each and every day!

Qristina & Quinn

We met PJ (aka Tinwhistler) in Mallorca, Spain this summer - here we are at his house jamming away!

WE'RE IN SCOTLAND!!! Still pretty jet-lagged to be honest, but Quinn and I are so excited that it doesn't even matter! Bad news; my soundpost came off sometime between Victoria BC and 15 minutes before our first gig in Fochabers. Luckily Charlie, a fiddle-maker, just happened to be at the venue! Where else but in Scotland?! Anyway we played Speyfest yesterday and it went great... We also got to watch Lau and dance to the Red Hot Chili Pipers. We played another show tonight as part of Aberdeen Youth Festival alongside some fantastic groups and that was a lot of fun too. My brother wants to use the computer so that's all for now but I'll keep you updated! "Cheers"!

-QRISTINA

Qristina here; we're in the Vancouver airport waiting for our 2nd flight that will take us to Toronto (4 1/2 hours... :-S) It's been smooth sailing so far, all except for when Quinn realized that his new guitar case has a faulty lock! Poor little guy was freaked right out. (Quinn has moved up in the world and no longer uses his "Cort" guitar) We ended up "sealing" the guitar case with a fragile sticker... Thanks Air-Canada!!! Luckily we only have an hour to kill at this airport... 3 and a half hours in Toronto though... OUCH! Then we fly to London and then to Edinburgh = 24 hours of travelling. But all is not lost... We have muffins! I'll keep you updated!

-QRISTINA

So our CD is now available - well it's sort of been available since July 10th but we are still trying to set up on-line sales through our website qbachand.com (which is under construction). Anyway we've had a few inquiries on how to order/buy one, and for now the best way is to send us an email or message through MySpace or our Youtube channel Qristina & Quinn's YouTube Channel or even our website.  We are super excited about the CD, it's got 16 tracks and some great tunes.  We had guest musicians on several tracks including Ueillean pipes, penny whistle, low whistle, Irish flute, bass, bodhran, accordion...  

We brought the CD up to Vancouver Island Music Fest a couple of weeks ago and sold quite a few there which was awesome considering there were so many great musicians' CD's for sale.  The line up included Taj Mahal, Earl Scruggs, Jerry Douglas, The Wailers, Bela Fleck, two of my favourite fiddlers: Luke Bulla and Casey Driessen (who can chop his fiddle like a mad-man!) & many more great artists! Thanks to anyone who bought our CD. 

We performed at another folk festival this weekend, the 24th Annual Islands Folk Festival.  It really was an amazing experience, and all the shows we played were a lot of fun. My favourite was our first show which was in "the chapel"; the room had fantastic acoustics. We knew a few people would come watch but we weren't expecting the room to be packed like it was! They even had to turn people away! And I can't believe we're just a few days from our trip to Europe!  We still have to figure out how to carry 100 CDs in our carry-on luggage.. We're flying from Victoria to Toronto to London to Edinburgh, then driving up to Aberdeen.  Ugh. It's going to be a very long trip.  We're renting a car when we're there so driving on the "wrong" side of the road will be exciting.  Hopefully Dad will let me drive the rental car... Although I'm not sure if that's even legal? We've got a pretty busy schedule in Scotland, we're there for 8 days.  Then it's off to Ireland.  We're flying with RyanAir from Aberdeen to Dublin, and picking up a car there to go to Feakle.  We're in Ireland for 12 days, we're looking forward to that the most.  We're finishing off our trip with a week-long stay in Mallorca (Spain) to visit family and enjoy the sun & beaches. 

We're back home on August 27th almost in time for school.  Yes, school - back to the grindstone...  Quinn will be going into Grade 7 and I'll be starting at Camosun College. Hopefully by then I'll be in all the classes I need.  I was pretty busy this spring & didn't sign up for classes early enough so I'm on a couple of wait-lists... Oh yeah, we posted a few tunes from our CD. Enjoy! Bye for now, -Qristina

For those of you who have been asking "when is your CD coming out"?  Well we are scheduled to begin recording February 29!  We have 16 tracks, and lots of our favorite tunes, lots of traditional but also some original pieces.  We are a bit anxious about it, don't know how long it's going to take before we have a finished product (but we hope by April/May).  We'll have some guest musicians, but it'll be mostly just the two of us.  Stay tuned for updates!