The Scotsman

Martin Parker

Sharp harpist Savourna shows herself mother of invention

Edinburgh International Harp Festival

THERE is a special kind of wit and energy behind Savourna Stevenson’s music for solo harp. The construction of her instrument, known as the clarsach or Celtic harp, works against harmonic flamboyance, contrapuntal melody and timbral colouration, but she still finds a seemingly limitless resource in the instrument’s supposed deficiencies.

Stevenson’s approach is to impose a style, genre or rhythmic pattern and experiment with extended instrumental techniques to find the most enjoyable realisation of her vision. Although her playing was of first-rate, virtuoso quality, some of her pieces were blurred around the edges, as if she was not certain if they belonged in the concert hall or supermarket. Fortunately, however, these saccharine moments were few and there was much to remember.

Her homage to Kermit the Frog, Silverado Squatters, impressively converted the harp into a one-woman, bluegrass banjo ensemble and her final piece, Fording the Tweed, shone with harmonic twists and turns that might ordinarily be impossible. Stevenson’s programme represented a forward-looking illustration of just how far the harp can go in the right hands.

The Herald

Rob Adams

Savourna Stevenson / Anuna, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall

It’ll no’ a’ be as refined as this, the 20 days and nights of music, song, and dance frae a’ the airts that is the seventh Celtic Connections. Yet while this opening concert presented something of a restrained overture, in its own way it also gave a fair taste of where what we are about to hear and see comes from and where it’s going.

With the lightest of compositional touches, versatile harper Savourna Stevenson led her string quartet on an odyssey inspired by Scottish song, subtly integrating jazz figures and blues voicings with north-east ballad and Gaelic waulking melody.

An impressive and interestingly conceived composition which was both attractive and easily digested, Stevenson’s new three-part work set an apt scene for the bite-size works that the 17-piece Irish choir, Anuna, presented with support from a chamber orchestra comprised of members of Scottish Opera’s orchestra and a well-marshalled Irish dance troupe.

Introduced with roguish wit by founder Michael McGlynn and sung with carefulness and charm, Anuna’s repertoire is a time-travelling mini-Celtic Connections-and-beyond in itself, taking in the works of eighth-century Irish bishops, traditional songs from Ireland, Finland, and Spain, a tribute to the late Jeff Buckley, and even an Elvis Costello adaptation.

Widely found though all this is, it all fits together remarkably seamlessly, and while this latest visit didn’t have quite the dramatic impact as their candle-lit presentation of a year or two back and at times flirted precariously with tweeness, there’s a haunting quality to the sound of these voices which can make even the overexposed She Moved Thro’ The Fair sound fresh.

The Stage

Graham Gurrin

Trio whips up stormy delight.

Superb – June Tabor and Danny Thompson joined Savourna Stevenson for their final London performance at Union Chapel by Graham Gurrin

This was the final performance by this trio of Singing the Storm, a set of new and traditional border ballads set to music by Savourna Stevenson, having been commissioned for the Borders Festival in October 1995 and taken on occasional tour since then. It is hard to see how the evening could have gone better.
You take one of the finest double bass players in the land, Danny Thompson, as quietly unassuming as he is totally in control, gently easing along the rhythm one minute, the harmonic progression the next. You add June Tabor, a very fine singer and collector of traditional songs. And you put Savourna Stevenson in charge, master of the Scottish harp and an extraordinarily intuitive composer, who has the bardic aim of storytelling well in mind in her settings of lyrics by playwright Liz Lochhead, songwriter Michael Marra and poets Val Gillies and Les Barker.
Tabor’s unaccompanied singing on Willie’s Drowned in Yarrow was superb – if you have not heard her sing in a church you have not lived. By contrast, the arrangement of Twa Corbies was complex – all bowed chords from Thompson and high-pitched tinkling from the harp – and spinetingling in a different sense.
All three musicians are noted for their desire to move on to different projects and different styles. This no doubt has some bearing on their ability to remain so fresh and exciting…

The Glasgow Herald

Sue Wilson

Celtic Connections

Savourna Stevenson, June
Tabor and Danny Thompson
Glasgow Royal Concert Hall

SHEER class was writ large over both halves of this spellbinding concert, perfectly complementing performances representing the cream of contemporary tradition.
Longtime vanguard marches on the English and Scottish scenes, Stevenson, Tabor and Thompson make up an impressive sum of parts – whether the whole is greater is hard to say, given their individual potency as performers, but it certainly proved a richly rewarding collaboration. Each has such an array of tones and effects to draw on – the calm, distant sorrow of Tabor’s singing by turns stern and tender, overlaid with bewitchingly delicate expressive detail, Stevenson’s harp equally at home evoking the atmosphere of Mexico or Mali ( in duets of her own compositions with Thompson ) or tracing gently frisky figures behind The Bonnie Bonnie Broom.
Double bass magician Thompson, meanwhile, sounded as though he had at least a trombone and keyboards up there as well, with all his bendings, stretching and blending of plucked notes. A formidable collective weight of accomplishment, combined and articulated with an engagingly light touch.