Mairi Campbell

Red Earth is the story of her grandmother's life as the wife of Campbell's grandfather, a young doctor who died in China in 1938 during the Sino-Japanese War.

Revival!

"Home (is not what I left behind)" is about her grandmother's return to Scotland from China in 1940.

"She stitched upon my heart" is written for her own mother who was a fine artist and quiltmaker.

marks the life of her paternal grandfather The Rev Duncan Campbell and his involvement with the Lewis Revivals in the 1950s.

Campbell and Francis toured the folk clubs and village halls of Scotland with both shows.

They incorporated moving narrative with fiddle and viola tunes and original and traditional songs.

Mairi Campbell (born 1965) is a Scottish folk singer and musician.

Campbell's songs and music have a rooted and powerful quality that range from the everyday to the universal, both in sound and subject matter.

Campbell has been much praised for her singing voice and musical skills.

She has won multiple awards including Scots Singer of the Year, Female Musician of the Year, Neil Gow Composition of the Year, and Tutor of the Year.

Campbell was a member of the Kreisler String Orchestra, an award-winning conductorless string orchestra, from 1989 to 1994.

However she felt a strong hankering for traditional music and felt the need to "come home" to her own cultural roots.

In 1991 Campbell visited Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, Canada.

This marked a turning point and the start of Campbell's apprenticeship to traditional fiddle and Scots song.

Over the next few years she taught step dancing and fiddle across Scotland and for the Scots Music Group.

The accordion player and multi-instrumentalist Freeland Barbour took her under his wing and she joined the Scottish dance band the Occasionals, in 1992.

She was a member of the Ceilidh Collective and Bella McNab's dance bands.

Campbell initially gained prominence as one half of the folk band The Cast, alongside her husband David Francis, with whom she has had a long and fruitful collaboration.

Their debut album The Winnowing was released in 1994.

The Cast recorded another two albums: Colours of Lichen in 1996 and Green Gold in 2007.

In 1999, Campbell and Francis were invited to perform their version of "Auld Lang Syne" for Sean Connery at the Presidential Awards in Washington, D.C., with President Bill Clinton in the audience.

The album includes their version of "Auld Lang Syne" which was featured on the soundtrack of the 2008 movie Sex and the City.

The song can be heard during the New Year's scene of the film, accompanying a montage of the main characters' activities that night.

In 2011 and 2013 Campbell, Francis and the director Kath Burlinson made two shows of story and songs that marked the lives of Campbell's forebears.

In 2011, Campbell released her first self-titled solo album.

Mairi Campbell features the songs "Portobello Sands" which tells of a mother keenly awaiting the return of her child.

They released the album Revival & The Red Earth in 2012.

In 2014, Campbell released her solo EP, Seven Songs.

This is a showcase of Campbell and Francis's songwriting.

In 2015 Campbell created her first solo theatre show Pulse, an autobiographical account of a musician seeking pulse, co-devised and directed by Kath Burlinson.

Tracks from her 2015 album Pulse, a collaboration with the producer David Gray, feature in the show.

Campbell is one half of the duo The Cast, whose version of the Robert Burns poem "Auld Lang Syne" featured in the movie Sex and the City.

Campbell is also a member of the ceilidh band The Occasionals, and is a guest musician with the baroque ensemble Concerto Caledonia.

Campbell was born and raised in Morningside, Edinburgh.

She was brought up alongside her three sisters by their mother, the artist Marjorie Campbell and their father Archie, an academic at Napier University.

Her mother and father ensured that all four sisters had a strong grounding in music.

The sisters formed their own string quartet when Campbell was 11.

Campbell studied the viola with Michael Beeston at The City of Edinburgh Music School from age 16.

She went on to study with Csaba Erelyi at Guildhall School of Music in London where she was penalised for playing her own composition in her final exam.