Sir James MacMillan’s recording of The Lost Songs of St. Kilda released on Decca

On 9 September 2016 Decca Records release a disc of The Lost Songs of St. Kilda, featuring Trevor Morrisson and the Scottish Festival Orchestra, conducted by Sir James MacMillan. This new album features folk songs of the islanders of St. Kilda, about 40 miles west of the Outer Hebrides off Scotland’s north-west coast, the last of whom were evacuated from the island in 1930 and whose music was lost to the world until now.

The recording was made possible because of Scotsman Trevor Morrison, who was taught the songs in his youth on the island of Bute by a teacher from St Kilda. Morrison was recorded playing the songs in a nursing home several years ago and MacMillan and other leading Scottish composers including Craig Armstrong, Francis Macdonald and Christopher Duncan were then approached to add arrangements to the ethereal melodies. Each track is named after a part of St Kilda and MacMillan arranged the track Hirta and conducted the recording.

Speaking of being involved in the project MacMillan said:

“Forgotten songs, melodies that had disappeared from popular remembrance, and he’s kept them alive playing them on the piano. Very beautiful, simple accompaniments. There’s something very haunting about those recordings. You can feel the years rolling back: something very ethereal. The idea of bringing those songs, those melodies back to life is lovely in itself but to clothe them in new music or to allow them to become the jumping-off point for a composer’s own explorations into those melodies is a great idea.”

The Lost Songs of St. Kilda is available for purchase from iTunes and Amazon, and is available to stream on Spotify.