Catriona McKay
Catriona McKay
Harponium
(Glimster)
Harper Catriona McKay is a musical free spirit who can tackle wholly improvised works and has the ability to take traditional music out to the edge without sacrificing traditional forms and techniques at the altar of experimentation. Indeed, it is the easy intermingling of her fearless adventures with her folk roots that makes Harponium such an enriching, rewarding and uplifting listening experience. Essentially, as its name suggests, a blending of Scottish harp and harmonium, both played by McKay herself, into one new instrument, this is a triumph of brilliant musicality, joyous expression, daring harmonic shifts and moving melodicism. The harp sparkles, jinks and occasionally buzzes like some ancient African instrument while the harmonium brings both subtle and rich colouration, a certain endearingly clunky jauntiness, and a church organ-like grandeur. The sheer virtuosity of the opening Kronos Reel is simply dazzling. Harp Royalty Meets Banjo Czar drives McKay's clear, expansive tunefulness with an almost club music beat, and Irish Harp Hero sings exultantly. BBC Folk Awards take note.
Rob Adams
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article