The Herald

Glasgow (UK)

Rob Adams

Arches, 253 Argyle Street, Glasgow

When Savourna Stevenson forsook classical piano studies for the Scottish harp in a fit of teenage rebellion, even she couldn’t have imagined that the instrument, almost forgotten at the time, would be the key to such varied musical adventures.

Whatever music she’s since heard in her head – be it jazz, blues, bluegrass banjo, African kora or Mexican mariachi band – Stevenson has translated it onto the harp without hint of novelty value or gimmickry. The result has been a body of work as individually expressive as it is unpredictably eclectic and that retains her Scottish roots while considering the next horizon.

Although not always the most visible of performers, she invariably breaks out of her Borders retreat with renewed passion and her latest work, settings of Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran’s texts for harp and Iranian percussion ensemble The Chemiranis, promises another eventful chapter in her continuing travelogue.