Tutors
Scroll down to see this year's tutor information
Corrina Hewat
Corrina Hewat, born in Edinburgh, was brought up in the Black Isle in the Scottish Highlands. She is a harper, singer, composer & arranger, musical director, recording artist, musical collaborator, workshop leader, and has been the Principal Scottish Harp Tutor at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland for the last decade, winning Tutor of the Year in 2013 and nominated again in 2020 at the Scots Trad Music Awards.
She leads Sangstream, the Edinburgh-based Scots Folk Choir and Health in Harmony, a Scottish Borders Health Choir, started to promote staff well-being.
She is working on releasing the Song of Oak and Ivy for 2023.
Wendy Stewart
Wendy Stewart is a leading Scottish harper, a world class performer and inspirational teacher whose style and repertoire encompasses both traditional music and her own compositions. She has produced 4 solo recordings, several music books and teaches all level of student, from beginner to graduate, throughout Europe and the USA.
These days much of Wendy`s musical life and inspiration stems from her home range and community in bonny Glencairn. She continues to explore musical connections with the natural world, the spoken word, dance and science.
Her most recent CD, Folds in the Field, is of her own music, inspired by Scotland`s South West and Wendy is a happy member of local group, The Galloway Agreement.
www.cairnwatermusic.com
Heather Downie
At the age of 15 she began playing the Scottish harp and was immediately accepted into Splore, the traditional music course at the Aberdeen International Youth Festival. Having graduated in 2008 from The Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama with a first class honors BA Scottish music, studying harp with Wendy Stewart and piano with Mary McCarthy and James Ross, Heather went on to complete a postgraduate diploma in Scottish music performance, under the guidance of Corrina Hewat. She was a finalist in the BBC’s Young Traditional Musician of the Year in 2015.
Heather has travelled extensively in Scotland and her music has taken her as far afield as Germany, Demark, Latvia and New York, playing for dignitaries like Jack McConnell and Prince Albert of Monaco. She also provided backing music for Tom Conti’s rendition of ‘A Man’s A Man’ during Tartan week in America in 2006, and returned in 2009. Heather also has an interest in composition and Scottish history, folklore and the roots of the songs and tunes in her repertoire. She has over 10 years teaching experience, both in schools and with individual pupils. She currently tutors and lectures at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.
www.heatherdownie.co.uk
Dave Milligan
Dave Milligan is a highly versatile musician and a leading figure in the diverse Scottish music scene. His musical imagination flows freely between multiple genres, and is in great demand all over the world as a performer, composer, arranger, musical director and educator. Dave has performed all over the world with a diverse array of bands, including: his long-established duos with Corrina Hewat and with concertina virtuoso Simon Thoumire; as pianist and arranger with award-winning jazz trumpeter Colin Steele; as pianist and founding member of the international super group String Sisters. His most recent release with Karine Polwart, ‘Still As Your Sleeping’, is a duo album of piano and voice. Deceptively simple, yet devastatingly powerful.
Much of his time is now spent arranging for Mark Knopfler in the stage show ‘Local Hero’, while also balancing design work and his own session work.
Previous tutors and performers
Cheyenne Brown
Cheyenne gained an Honours degree in Scottish music from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow in 2006, where she had a full scholarship from the Associated Board of Music. In November of 2009, she was awarded an MSc in Scottish Ethnology from the University of Edinburgh. The research-based masters degree allowed her to carry out fieldwork in never-before studied areas of the Scottish harp. She researched the development in the construction of the Scottish harp since its revival in the 1930s through to today’s modern builders.
Cheyenne is in high demand as a harp tutor on both sides of the Atlantic, having taught for the Ohio Scottish Arts School, Common Ground on the Hill, and the Washington Area Folk Harp Society (all in the US), and the Gaelic College at St Ann’s in Cape Breton. She travels regularly to teach in the Netherlands, Germany and northern Europe. In Scotland she maintains a full rota of private students as well as teaching for the Edinburgh International Harp Festival, Clarsach Society events, and Feis across the country (Gaelic music festivals). She has re-founded and is past convenor of the Glasgow Branch of the Clarsach Society and is involved in running monthly harp workshops in Glasgow.
Cheyenne’s playing style is characteristically free and creative, making much use of improvisation and contrasting textures.
“…Consummate skill… stunning self-penned tunes… Cheyenne displays that envied emphathy with both instrument and music that few achieve” – Folkwords
“Creative and atmopheric modern use of the harp… energetic elements balanced aplenty with elegance and sensitivity” -Living Tradition
Isbel Pendlebury
Isbel is a Highland based teacher, performer and composer. She graduated from Strathclyde University’s Honours degree in applied music in 2013 and then subsequently earned a Post Graduate Diploma in Education. She currently works as a Secondary music teacher in the Highlands alongside her performance and compositional work on the Clarsach.
She performs most as part of a fiddle and clarsach duo with violinist Emma Donald. This partnership stemmed from a shared love of composition and an aim to push the boundaries of what is expected from both instruments. Her current music work is focussed on composition for a number of exciting projects and collaborations that are under construction. In addition to this she remains a member of the Highland Branch of the Clarsach society on which she was convenor for four years and continues teaching Clarsach locally.
Rachel Newton
Singer and harpist Rachel Newton draws on poems and ballads that are hundreds of years old, working them into her contemporary compositional style to create a rich sound that is ambitious, original and unique. Rachel works across a range of performance platforms including theatre and storytelling.
A skilled collaborator, Rachel is a founder member of The Shee, BBC Radio 2 Folk Award 2017 Best Group The Furrow Collective and is a part of the Lost Words: Spell Songs. She has recently launched the new duo project Heal & Harrow with long time friend and colleague Lauren MacColl. Rachel' previous solo releases are The Shadow Side (2012), Changeling (2014), Here's My Heart Come Take It (2016) and West (2018).
Rachel was awarded Instrumentalist of the Year 2016 at the Scots Trad Music Awards and Musician of the Year in the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards 2017. Her album Here's My Heart Come Take It was shortlisted as one of Scotland's top 10 outstanding albums in the Scottish Album of the Year (SAY) Award 2017. She was awarded a Critics Award for Theatre in Scotland (CATS) for Best Music and Sound in 2009 for her work with the Rowantree Theatre Company
Co-founder of The Bit Collective, a group focusing on equality and diversity in folk and traditional music, Rachel has organised various campaigns and events, including the Trad. Reclaimed: Women in Folk festival at Kings Place, London in 2019. November 2020 marked the release of her fifth solo album To The Awe, based particularly around women’s experience.
PLEASE NOTE:
All workshops will be run on Zoom. Private links will be sent in advance of the weekend. You do not need to download Zoom to attend the workshops but it will make for an easier experience if you do. (Free to download https://zoom.us/download ).
Zoom learning means you learn with the guidance of a tutor online, listening and playing along, but all in the privacy of your own home. You can hear the tutor but the tutor can’t hear you unless you choose to unmute and share your sound.All abilities are learning at their own level with tutors moving between each workshop, so you will have a chance to work with everyone. We will come together at the end of each day in the fourth workshop.
There are no spaces for beginners in the online weekend, unfortunately. If you would like to stay in touch about ‘in person’ lessons, please sign up to the mailing list.
Pdf’s of all music that will be played in the Saturday night harp session will be sent in advance, although all tutors will be teaching through the aural, more traditional method, so please know there is no need to read music to attend.
All tunes taught will also be available as pdf’s after the workshop.
Numbers will be limited to ensure the best experience for all so please book early to make sure you have a place.
Harps will need to have either levers or pedals, or if you have no levers, you will be asked to retune a few notes to ensure we can play in a few keys. All music can be adapted for smaller or larger harps, so ALL harps are welcome!