Design by Watercolour
Gaelic music, song and words.
Watercolour
Design by Watercolour
Watercolour
Mary Ann Kennedy - Musician, Writer & Broadcaster
Tapa leibh airson tadhal air làrach-lìn Màiri Anna! Gheibhear fiosrachadh ma deidhinn fhèin agus a cuid obrach an seo, agus tha cothrom ann ceòl a cheannach, no brath a chur thuice. Fàilt' oirbh!
Thanks for visiting Mary Ann's website. You can find out more about herself and her work here, and buy music or get in contact. Welcome!
I grew up in the southside of Glasgow, in a city rich in languages and cultures, and as part of Scottish Gaels’ biggest urban diaspora. It was something of a strange and wonderful upbringing for me and my sister, feeling part of a big community but at the same time – in terms of peers at least – sometimes feeling like the only Gaels in the village. Things change, and it’s a joy to see today at the bottom of the street where I grew up, one of Glasgow’s three Gaelic schools. You can take the girl out of Glasgow, but never Glasgow out of the girl, and in the spirit of Gaels eternal need to sing about home, this is my Gaelic love-song for the city in all its guises – the voices of arrivals in search of a new life and of those, like me, born and bred there with Gaelic as our first language. . " Mary Ann’s whole musical experience and passion, with various live formats capable of communicating this, whether as an intimate duo or as full-scale performance, engaging audiences with Gaelic songs of real people in the here and now, all delivered with her trademark quirky sense of humour.
Mary Ann was voted Gaelic singer of the year at the 2019 Scots Trad Music Awards. Her first band, Cliar, also won the all-time Best Album accolade at the inaugural awards in 2003. She earned a Saltire Award for her ground-breaking choral project, 'Lasair Dhè' and with her tradition-bearer family, the Campbells of Greepe, the major biography and album project 'Fonn' won the Arts and Culture award at the first National Gaelic Awards. Mary Ann is also Artistic Director of Scotland's Gaelic Gospel Choir, Soisgeul.
Musical commissions include 'Talamh Beò' for Coigach & Assynt Living Landscape; 'Beul na h-Oidhche gu Camhanaich' (Dusk to Dawn) for Blas Festival; 'Aiseag' (The Ferryboat) for PRSforMusic Foundation's 1st New Music Biennial, 'Dubh- Shneachd' for the International Symposium on Antarctic Earth Sciences and Associate Artist for Aberdeen Music Hall. Mary Ann also created 'Cluaidh (Clyde - A River Recovery)' and 'Lorg Ghlaschu (In Search of the Dear Green Place' for the Royal National Mòd and Scottish Natural Heritage.
Mary Ann is based at the Watercolour Music recording studios in Ardgour with her husband, producer and engineer Nick Turner. She has performed on and produced over 40 albums, including her solo recordings for ARC Music - 'An Dàn' and 'Glaschu - Hometown Love Song'. She has also produced several music series for BBC, including the award-winning Gaelic music landmark series, 'Aig Cridhe Ar Ciùil'.
Mary Ann joined the BBC in 1993 and embarked on a freelance broadcasting career a few years later. She is the principal host of the annual Scots Trad Music Awards on BBC ALBA, and presents the TV series 'Seirm' from the Celtic Connections festival in Glasgow. Her long-running Scottish-Irish radio co-production with Seán O hÉanaig- 'Sruth na Maoile' won the Best Live Radio award at the 2020 international Celtic Media Awards.
Mary Ann sought comfort at the beginning of the pandemic by translating a children's classic. What started out as a labourof love then became a studio lockdown project, hauling out the dressing-up box and reading the chapters online for kids stuck at home. CS Lewis's celtic connections in the Narnia books were to become the inspiration for a flagship BBC Radio nan Gàidheal documentary and Mary Ann is now developing a follow-up for television.
http://www.watercolourmusic.co.uk/Projects/Narnia/
Coigach and Assynt is a land and a people in constant motion. The voices and experience of its people, sung out through their Music and Tales, paint a great canvas of human experience against a backdrop of rocks as old as the earth itself, and a landscape which tells its own dramatic tales of the cycle of life. 'Talamh Beò' is a collaboration with Nick Turner, Finlay Wells and Professor Donald MacLean - a 45 minute suite of new words and music for the Coigach and Assynt Living Landscape project.
http://www.watercolourmusic.co.uk/Projects/CA
Five artists. Five lockdown-deprived senses. Five works of art each. Highland Whispers is unique lockdown collaboration. Mary Ann was project manager for this artistic game of consequences, connecting artists from different artistic worlds. Nick Turner, Toria Caine, Alex Boyd, Pádraig Ó Tuama and Anna Raven created chains of impulse and response inspired by the five human senses - deprived and heightened by turn in lockdown. The result is a compact, powerful and beautiful exhibition touring in the real world and in the virtual.
www.highlandwhispers.co.uk
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" It is her delivery of the lyrics of others... that really shine." The Herald.
" Mary Ann’s commanding and captivating voice clearly articulates the gamut of feelings expressed in the words.
© 2020 Watercolour Music. All rights reserved.
