Maeve Gilchrist: The Harpweaver review: Taking her harp to new horizons

Buoyant, sprightly and utterly beguiling, this latest recording from Scottish harper Maeve Gilchrist is a fathoms-deep collection that sets the harp on a picaresque journey from the new world to the old.

This is Gilchrist’s first album as a composer, producer and arranger – a snapshot of a musician at the top of her game. Inspired by The Harp Weaver, a poem by Edna St Vincent Millay, it swings from the jaunty The Locomotive/The Adequate Sufficiency to the unapologetically nostalgic Brenda’s Abbey, a nod to the music hall tradition and the handing-down of songs so singable they insinuate themselves into the DNA of their singers.

Gilchrist's main collaborator is guitarist Kyle Sanna, and both follow venturesome paths as they weave their way through Gilchrist's luminous tunes. The Aizuri Quartet lend further depth and shade.

Gilchrist threads St Vincent’s Millay’s poem through the album, and even includes an excerpt of the poet reading it, suspending the music in a between-worlds place with one ear cocked to the past and the other straining to the future.

This, says Gilchrist, is a sonic postcard home; it’s also a gloriously expanded horizon for her beloved harp.