biography
Over the last ten years, singer and harp player
Corrina Hewat has emerged as one of the most distinctive, original
and versatile artists on the contemporary Scottish scene. Synthesising
the energies and idioms of traditional, jazz and classical music,
in formats ranging from entirely solo to a 31-piece "folk
orchestra", Corrina's combined talents as a vocalist, instrumentalist,
composer and arranger have won steadily increasing acclaim among
critics, fellow musicians and audiences alike.
Born in Edinburgh, Corrina grew up largely around Inverness
in the Scottish Highlands, where her parents, both folk fans
and amateur performers themselves, encouraged her burgeoning
interest in the region's rich musical heritage. After a few
years learning fiddle and piano, Corrina took up the Scottish
harp, or clarsach - Scotland's most ancient national instrument
- aged 12, and was soon performing at local festivals and ceilidhs.
Her early mentors, partly through the Highlands' feis movement
of Gaelic-based teaching festivals, as well as the Clarsach
Society's tuition programme, included Patsy Seddon and Mary
MacMaster, of Sileas and the Poozies fame, top traditional revivalist
Alison Kinnaird, and the world-renowned harp-fusion pioneer
Savourna Stevenson.
After a year studying classical harp with the late Sanchia Pielou
at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, Corrina switched
to a BA degree in Jazz, Popular and Contemporary Music at the
Leeds College of Music, becoming the first ever harpist to take
the course, and graduating with honours in 1993. Her teachers
there included the inspirational Irish player Máire Ní
Chathasaigh, and it was also during this time that she met her
musical partner and now husband, pianist David Milligan, with
whom she played in an extra-curricular jazz-funk outfit.
Corrina turned professional early in 1994, launching her new
duo with David, Bachué (then Bachué Café),
at the inaugural Celtic Connections festival in Glasgow. In
its inventive, sophisticated yet wholly organic integration
of traditional forms and material with jazz tonalities and rhythms,
that early Bachué sound set the essential template for
much of Corrina's work to date, also marking her first real
emergence as a singer. The following year,
performing solo, she was a finalist in the prestigious BBC Young
Tradition Award.
Ever since then, Corrina has found herself in escalating demand
not only for her harp skills and voice, but as a composer of
fast-widening repute. Her full tally of projects is far too
numerous to list here, but suffice to say her current discography
runs to around thirty recordings, including albums by Eric Bibb,
Carol Kidd and Horse MacDonald, as well as three volumes of
Linn Records' landmark Complete Works of Robert Burns series.
As well as Bachué - whose third album is due out in the
autumn of 2004 - she has performed with several different line-ups
across the folk-jazz interface, including Seannachie, Chantan
and Lammas, and is currently a member of the acclaimed vocal/harps
trio Shine. Shine are now collaborating with the female vocal
jazz trio, the Passion (Jacqui Dankworth, Sara Coleman and Lianne
Carrol). The variety of songs, styles and showbiz in the joining
of the two trios is an instant hit!
Corrina's continuing relationship with the Celtic Connections
festival has seen her participating in two of its major celebrations
of Scotland's female song tradition: 'My Ain Countrie', alongside
Sheena Wellington and Karen Matheson, which won a major award
as Best Scottish Act of 1996, and 2001's 'Scottish Women'. She
was also a key player in Celtic Connections' first ever Scotland-wide
initiative, the 2002 Scottish Women tour. Though she's been
writing tunes more or less since she first picked up the harp,
recent years have seen Corrina rapidly spreading her wings as
a composer of more extended ensemble works. In 1998, she was
one of the first artists featured in Celtic Connections' celebrated
'New Voices' series of commissions, winning a raft of critical
raves for Making the Connection, a 50-
minute vocal and instrumental suite for ten musicians, blending
worldwide traditional, contemporary and jazz elements. This
was followed in 2000 by Photons in Vapour, written for the re-opening
of the An Tobar Arts Centre on the isle of Mull. Performed by
27 musicians, singers and poets, it celebrates the role of the
arts in the community through the symbolism of light, and was
released on CD in 2002.
Later that same year, Corrina was selected to take part in
the 'Distil' weekend, a new mentoring project part-sponsored
by the Scottish Arts Council, which saw nine Scottish folk artists
working intensively with top contemporary composers Sally Beamish,
Paul Rissmann and Keith Tippett. Perhaps her most ambitious
venture to date took place at Celtic Connections 2003, when
she and David assembled 31 of Scotland's top young musicians
for a two-hour extravaganza of traditional and original music
entitled 'The Unusual Suspects', widely hailed as a crowning
highlight of the festival's tenth year. The Celtic-style big
band has now accomplished (with the organisation of Folkworks
with the support of the Scottish Arts Council) it's first UK
tour in February 2004. With 22 musicians on the road, the response
from audiences was immense, with every concert achieving standing
ovations.
Now, somehow, Corrina has succeeded in encapsulating all this
multifaceted artistry into a stunning debut album. The cool
yet radiant hues of her raw-silk voice print her uniquely sensuous
stamp on songs ranging from Burns' ‘Ae Fond Kiss', through
the age-old incest/murder ballad 'Sheath and Knife', to the
jazz standard 'When I Dream'. Tunes on the CD include striking
originals like the waywardly evocative 'Traffic' and the dreamy
title track, alongside adventurous reinterpretations of traditional
material. Corrina's singing, together with the quicksilver melodies,
rhythmic muscle and luxuriant reverb of her Camac electro-harp,
are spaciously complemented by David on piano, Donald Hay on
drums and Malinky's Karine
Polwart on backing vocals. Settle back for a tour of My Favourite
Place, and it's guaranteed you'll be loath to leave.
Discography
1996
Bachué - Bachué Café/ Record label: Highlander
Music
1999 Bachué - A Certain Smile / Record label: Culburnie
Records
2003 Corrina Hewat - My Favorite Place / Record label: Footstompin
Records
2004 Bachué - The Butterfly / Record label: Big Bash
Records
Sound
samples
Traffic
When
I dream
Sources
www.corrinahewat.com
www.ayepod.net/webcasts/teaching/chclarsach.htm
