Rachel Newton

Rachel Newton is a Scottish singer and harpist.

As well as playing both acoustic and electric harp she also plays viola, fiddle, piano and harmonium.

She performs solo as well as in the bands The Shee, The Furrow Collective and Boreas and was formerly a member of the Emily Portman Trio.

She was a member of the Lost Words Spell Songs project and is a co-founder of The Bit Collective, a group campaigning for equality in folk music.

Newton was brought up in Edinburgh and learnt harp, fiddle and classical violin.

She spoke English at home and Gaelic to her grandfather.

At her Gaelic-language school she sang in both English and Gaelic.

During the holidays she would stay with her grandparents in Achnahaird, Wester Ross.

At fifteen she decided to make a career in music.

In 2005 Newton formed The Shee with friends Shona Mooney, Laura-Beth Salter, Amy Thatcher, Lillias Kinsman-Blake and Olivia Ross whom she had met while studying for the Folk and Traditional Music degree at Newcastle University.

The group perform a mixture of their own works and traditional music, in both English and Gaelic.

In 2008 The Shee released their first album A Different Season.

fRoots magazine said it had an "air of bold friskiness and abundant energy" and called it "a very impressive debut indeed", and Folkworld described it as "raw, vibrant and powerful".

Earlier in 2008 the album Dear Someone had been released under the name Rachel and Lillias, a collaboration between Newton and Kinsman-Blake, who was also part of The Shee.

Newton won for "Best Music and Sound" at the 2009 Critics' Awards for Theatre in Scotland for her work with Rowantree Theatre Company.

Decadence, the second album by The Shee, was released in 2010 containing a mixture of traditional and original music.

Colin Irwin writing in fRoots said it showed "confidence, conviction, adeptness and raw talent".

In 2012 Newton released her first solo album The Shadow Side.

The album contained five instrumentals composed by Newton and new arrangements of six other songs, with the original compositions being mentioned by reviewers as the most notable part.

The album was nominated for "Album of the Year" at the 2012 Scots Trad Music Awards.

Also released the same year was the third album by The Shee, Murmurations.

The album was mostly original work with some traditional tunes, with praise directed to the arrangements and the range of musical influences on show.

The artwork for the CD showed a murmuration of starlings and was designed so no two CDs had exactly the same arrangement of birds.

The Furrow Collective, a new group made up of Newton, Lucy Farrell, Emily Portman and Alasdair Roberts formed in 2013, released an album in 2014 titled At Our Next Meeting and then released the EP Blow Out the Moon in 2015.

The releases were new interpretations of traditional music, with songs chosen with an emphasis on storytelling.

With all four members being established artists on the Scottish and English folk scenes the group was described by the British Council as an "Anglo-Scots supergroup".

Newton's second solo release was the 2014 album Changeling, which was commissioned by the Celtic Connections festival as part of its New Voices series, and premiered in January 2014 at the festival.

The album was written by Newton and on the recording she performs vocals and plays harp and viola.

It also features Corrina Hewat on vocals and harp, Lauren MacColl on fiddle, Adam Holmes on vocals, Mattie Foulds on percussion, Su-a Lee on cello and musical saw and Alec Frank-Gemmill on horn.

The theme was inspired by Scottish folk takes of human children being taken by fairies and replaced by supernatural creatures and the use of this to explain children with behavioural problems and disabilities.

In the album Newton wanted to look at the darker side of traditional folk tales and use them to explore feelings about life and death that are hard to express outside of music.

Robin Denselow writing in The Guardian gave it 3 stars out of 5 while praising the "haunting vocal work and elegant harp playing" and the Financial Times gave it 4 stars out of 5.

Other reviews called it "quietly compelling" and "emotionally stirring".

In 2014 Newton took part in a week-long retreat at Hatfield House, along with Martin Simpson, Nancy Kerr, Jim Moray, Bella Hardy, John Smith and Hannah James as well as Emily Askew, a specialist in early music.

The retreat was organised by the English Folk Dance and Song Society and the Folk by the Oak festival to write new works inspired by Elizabethan music.

The new music was then performed and released as an album.

They were nominated for "Best Group" and for "Best Traditional Track" at the 2015 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards and again nominated for "Best Traditional Track" at the 2016 awards.

Newton won the 2016 Instrumentalist of the Year at the Scots Trad Music Awards and in the same year won Hands Up for Trad's Ignition Award, an award for artists who are innovating in Scottish traditional music.

Newton's third solo release was Here's My Heart Come Take It in 2016, which was shortlisted for the Scottish Album of the Year Award in 2017.

The album was mostly traditional songs in new arrangements, including songs from the Max Hunter songbook and original music for Sir Walter Scott's An Hour With Thee.