Harpist Fiona Rutherford is hoping that people don't take the title of her New Voices composition, Sleep Sound, too literally as an invitation when it premières next Sunday.

"Given that it's all on the theme of sleep, it is quite funny for it to be happening on the last day of Celtic Connections, when quite a lot of the audience will probably be very sleep-deprived or have completely disrupted sleep patterns. Hopefully they will be able to tune right in."

Rutherford chose her theme partly because of her instrument's ancient mythical associations with the otherworld of slumber, partly because "it's something absolutely everybody does; a subject absolutely everyone can relate to. "Particularly on the harp, though, the danger with writing about sleep is that it'll all be really dreamy and slow – so I've made sure the music includes quite a few wired bits, about insomnia and nightmares.

"I sometimes have trouble sleeping myself, and I did actually use some of those times to work on it."

Other preparation included researching the various phases and processes involved in sleep, from brain-wave patterns to body-clock calibration, and quizzing friends about their dreams.

"The loose structure of the piece is meant to represent a night's sleep – albeit quite an eventful one," Rutherford continues. "Within that, there are three main strands: the way we take all our worries and hopes to bed with us each night, the different stages of sleep, and finally dreams, particularly the flying dreams that so many people have."

Some New Voices commissions are awarded to musicians on the threshold of adding a compositional string to their bow, as a challenging but rewarding leg-up in that direction; others go to artists who have already established a fruitful record as authors of new music, to help them continue spreading their wings as Rutherford evidently has done.

Born and still based in Edinburgh, she grew up learning both traditional music on the harp, from such luminary teachers as Isobel Mieras and Savourna Stevenson, and classical disciplines at the City of Edinburgh Music School, subsequently gaining a first-class degree in composition at Devon's celebrated Dartington College of the Arts, followed by a Masters in 2010 back at Edinburgh University, where she studied under Nigel Osborne.

That same year, she also won the Clarsach Society's Young Composer prize, while other recent projects include scores for award-winning indie movies The Inheritance and The Space Between. "I think you can tell from how I've written Sleep Sound that I've had that folk and classical grounding alongside each other," she says. "I think you can also tell how interested I am in writing film music.

"That's also why I chose the particular musicians I did for this project – they are all pretty versatile players, and all interested in lots of different styles of music."

Rutherford has also written extensively for theatre – which is how she met actor Colin Scott-Moncrieff, who will be contributing narration to next weekend's performance, together with Rutherford's eight-piece harps, strings and piano ensemble.

"He was involved in an Edinburgh Fringe production of A Midsummer Night's Dream I did the music for, in Rosslyn Chapel," she says.

"So the connection through that particular play seemed quite appropriate."

Fiona Rutherford plays Strathclyde Suite, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, February 5, 1pm. New Voices is supported by the Sunday Herald