Many thanks to Corrina Hewat for sending me this picture of her daughter, Ella, making an early start with her harp practice!
Ella was born not long after Corrina had finished recording her latest CD, Harp I Do. So much for maternity leave - Corrina writes: " I had mixed and mastered the album, travelled to Orkney Folk Festival, plus done a tour with the singing trio, travelled to Norway with the 22 piece big band, travelled to America to do the Ohio Scottish Arts School and the Somerset Folk Harp Weekend, performed at the BBC Proms, produced a CD of BBC Young Traditional Musicians of the Year, and did some concerts in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival before I knew I was expecting. Then it was too late to cancel concerts, and I kept performing right up until a month before I gave birth. So Ella is well used to music of all sorts..."
As Mary Macmaster was saying to me during the Jakez Francois Lever Harp Competition, Corrina Hewat has hugely influenced both the Scottish and the international lever harp/traditional music scenes. She combines traditional music with contemporary and jazz influences, and was nominated Instrumentalist of the Year at the Scottish Traditional Music Awards in 2004.
With her partner David Milligan, Corrina is the music director of the 22-piece Scottish folk big band The Unusual Suspects, nominated Best Live Act in 2005. She also tours with Northumbrian piper Kathryn Tickell, has a vocal trio with Karine Polwart and Annie Grace (who will release an album this year), and she teaches traditional music at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. She has recorded over thirty albums on both acoustic and electroharp, including with Shine, Bachue, The Unusual Suspects, Chantan and Kathryn Tickell.
Harp I Do received this review on Folking.com: "This is music you can feel, it shivers your nerves and shudders your bones, it's like having your ear pressed up against the soundboard of the harp… complex and captivating melodies, played with a pace and precision that almost beggars belief!” . You can buy it and all other albums on Corrina's website.
