Maeve Gilchrist

Dirty Linen

This is an excerpt from the print edition of Dirty Linen #137 (August/September 2008).
The full article is in the magazine, available on newsstands, by subscription, and at the Dirty Linen webstore.

Maeve Gilchrist

Tradition and Improvisation

by Lahri Bond

It was a glorious midsummer morning at the Irish Connections (ICONS) Music and Arts Festival in Canton Massachusetts, and Scottish harpist and singer Maeve Gilchrist and her trio had just finished up a 40-minute set that fused Celtic, jazz, and Latin influences into the unique sound found on her debut CD, Reaching Me. Within earshot of three stages playing a more conventional brand of Irish reel and jigs, Gilchrist sat down to talk about her journey, which has taken her music from tradition to innovation.

Gilchrist grew up in the Portobello district of Edinburgh, Scotland, where she inherited a diverse range of musical influences from her parents. "I was lucky enough to grow up in a really musical family. My mum wasn't a musician, but two of her sisters are harp players. Her side of the family is Irish, and we always had many parties with people playing music and dancing at our house. My dad writes stories and music reviews for The Scotsman and plays the border pipes. He really exposed me to a huge selection of music, from Joni Mitchell to Ravi Shankar to Cream to loads of traditional music."

The love of music in the Gilchrist household resulted in Maeve studying classical piano at age seven, and by the age of 10 she had added the traditional Gaelic harp known as the clàrsach to her musical arsenal. "When I took up the harp, I joined the City of Edinburgh Music School. By the end, towards 16, 17, I was interested in starting to sing a bit, as well. The head of the school told me about Berklee College of Music in Boston, which he thought would be a great place where I could embrace all parts of my musical patchwork quilt."

[cover #137]