Rachel Newton has had a very busy year so far with her involvement in a number of projects including The Elizabethan Session residency in March, the fruits of which can be heard on CD come 8th September. She joined The Furrow Collective and the Emily Portman Trio in London for Emily and Alasdair’s mini-festival Outlandish Nights at King’s Place. Alongside this she has been performing solo and with The Shee and has somehow managed to find time to record a new solo album.
Changeling was a New Voices commission which Rachel performed at this year’s Celtic Connections after which she headed to the studio to record the album which is based on the performance but with some added songs and instruments.
We have another track ‘The Fairy Man‘ from the album to share with you today as our Song of the Day which features Adam Holmes on lead vocals. Rachel had this to say about the track:
The Fairy Man is by Scottish poet Sydney Goodsir Smith. I took his poem and set the words to music, arranging the song for vocals, harp, saw, horn and drums. I asked Adam Holmes to sing lead vocals for this one, mainly because I love his singing, but also as I felt it would work well to have another voice on the record, especially for this song. Although the subject matter is a slight departure from the Changeling theme, what I took from this poem is that the Fairy Man is not an outside, other worldly being but a part of one’s own psyche. This tied in with the idea behind the album of fairy tales and beliefs being an explanation for the events and experiences occurring in life that fall beyond our own comprehension.
Changeling is out on 1st September