Pilgrim Souls

The fiddler, singer and step-dancer with popular Scottish band Breabach, and a member of a prominent traditional music family from Fort William, Megan Henderson originally composed the music on this, her debut solo album, for a Celtic Connections New Voices concert in 2019. Recorded in June 2021 with a group of well-known musicians on the Scottish scene, including cellist Su-a Lee and Blazin’ Fiddles’ Anna Massie on mandolin, the compositions are a response to the paintings of Highland artist Christine Clark.

There’s an attractive simplicity to these pieces, which sit somewhere between the spontaneity of an informal traditional music session and impressionistic chamber music. Su-a Lee’s musical saw lends an effective, eerie quality to the initially calm ‘Flight of Fancy’ before it churns at a more vigorous pace and both Henderson and Laura-Beth Salter add gently sung songs in Gaelic and English respectively. ‘Almost Home’ has something of the quietly jaunty playing that Chris Wood and Andy Cutting brought to their duo albums and ‘Ascending’, borne on Alistair Iain Paterson’s buoyant piano motif, gives the album an appropriate final lift.