Following a sold-out run at Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and commissions from Hidden Door Festival and Celtic Connections last year, one of Scotland’s most sought-after harpists Esther Swift is to tour solo across Scotland this March with new original material.
A prolific, boldly innovative harpist, composer and singer, Esther works across genres as diverse as classical chamber music, traditional Scottish folk music and free improvisation. Having studied at Edinburgh’s St Mary’s Music School, the Royal Northern College of Music, and with harp pioneer Catriona MacKay, Esther has received numerous prestigious commissions and featured in many international collaborations.
As a composer, Esther explores ritual, connection, isolation, and the natural world. She has been likened to Kate Bush, Anna Meredith and Björk, her style drawing on her folk roots and taking influence from her love of jazz, minimalism and dance music. In recent commissions, her work has centred around poetry, composing instrumental settings for work from poets such as Carol Ann Duffy, William Butler Yeats, Rachel McCrum, and Edwin Morgan.
Below, you can watch a live performance of The Light Gatherer on which she shared:
The Light Gatherer is a poem by Carol Ann Duffy about her daughter. In this poem, she used beautiful, soft, flowering metaphors about light and light reflection, to demonstrate her daughter growing up. I wanted to echo this blossoming by writing a gradually rising melody that then releases and descends at the chorus. This feels like an intimate and yet epic poem, like all love poems of any nature, and I wanted to highlight this intimacy in the simple repetitive harp part and gentle unfolding of the chords.
I love setting poems to music, and this is one setting of many I have made and one I will be performing on my Scotland-wide tour in March, where I’ll also be setting to music, work from poets such as Edwin Morgan and Rachel McCrum.
The video was filmed by Perth Festival of the Arts in 2020.
From 11th-27th March, Esther’s solo tour will see her perform across the length and breadth of Scotland, from the culture hotspot in Edinburgh to rural gems in Caithness, Letham, Skye, Uig, North Uist, Lochgilphead, and Mull. A number of the gigs are supported by Scotland on Tour, and The Touring Network’s Supported Programme, of which Esther is a supported artist.
In intimate spaces, Esther will perform a programme of original and traditional compositions, with a mixture of instrumental and poetry settings for the pedal harp and voice.
Performance Details
11 March – Assembly Roxy, Edinburgh
17 March – Lyth Arts Centre, Caithness
18 March – Letham Nights, Letham
22 March – Seall, Skye
23 March – Uig Community Centre, Uig
24 March – Taigh Chearsabhagh, North Uist
25 March – Craignish Village Hall, Lochgilphead
27 March – An Tobar, Mull
Tickets are on sale now and can be found at www.estherswift.co.uk/gigs