Scottish harp player Ailie Robertson brings the focus onto her own instrument after recent projects, including Traditional Spirits and Northern Lights, where she's shared arrangements with large-ish groups.
Through her playing with the band The Outside Track and studies in Limerick, she has strong connections with Quebecois and Irish music, and these figure prominently here. Solo harp tracks including the slow air The Wild Geese and the perjink barndance Around The Fairy Port showcase Robertson's able, fluent playing, and her own Lili's Hornpipe and the jig set The Kilmovee highlight her facility with rolls and note bending. It's the tracks where she calls on guitarist-accordionist Tim Edey and cellist Natalie Haas that particularly stay with the listener, however, with Haas bringing out the simple, elegant romance and attractive, slightly nostalgic flavour of La Gueussinette. Edey lends his trademark energetic guitar playing as well as suitably Francophone accordion to the careening La Valse á Huit Ans, and both colour and lovely expression to O Carolan's The Fairy Queen.
Rob Adams
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