Hannah moved here with her family as a five year old and grew up in the area. She attended Beauly Primary and then Charleston Academy and is currently a third-year student at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow.

She studied music at school, but her interest in the harp was sparked by an outside encounter.

"I heard some clarsachs being played at the Marymass festival in Inverness when I was quite young," Phillips recalled.

"I was probably about six or seven, and I just loved the sound.

"I pestered my mum and dad for lessons and eventually they gave in and contacted the Clarsach Society, and they arranged some lessons for me with Heather Yule — and that was how I got started.

"There was never any provision for harp at school, so all my tuition was through the society at that time."

Although her initial interest lay in playing traditional music on the clarsach, she gradually became interested in classical music and the concert pedal harp.

She began lessons on the bigger instrument when she was 15, studying in Inverness with Michelle Wheallans. She now studies pedal harp at the RSAMD, but has also been able to take clarsach as a second study and maintains a foot in both camps, with a sideline in jazz.

"Although I started with traditional music on the clarsach, my parents are both classical musicians," she explained.

"My mum is a visiting piano teacher in the Inverness area, and my dad plays violin, so I grew up hearing classical music around the house. As I grew older I came to love the pedal harp as well as the clarsach, and classical music was my main focus on pedal harp, although I dipped into jazz a bit as well."

Hannah pestered her parents for lessons on the clarsach when she was only six

While today's recital will be her first solo concert in Inverness, she has performed in other contexts in the area, including the Caledonian Canal Cèilidh Trail.

Her programme for today's recital will feature both harp and clarsach, and will reflect her diversity of musical interests, including a piece by Glaswegian composer Eddie McGuire, who many will know from The Whistlebinkies as well as his classical compositions.

"I'm doing the harp piece from his series of solo preludes," Phillips said. "He has written them for a whole range of instruments, but the one for harp focuses on a traditional style of tune that he does all kinds of things with in the course of the piece. I felt that would be a nice choice in terms of bridging the main styles in the concert and it's a lovely piece to play.

"I'll start with Bach, I think. There are transcriptions of the violin sonatas and partitas for harp. I'll also be doing some Russian music — harp is big in Russia — and some traditional tunes I have arranged myself on the clarsach, and I'll be doing a jazz piece by the American jazz harpist, Deborah Henson-Conant."

I wondered if there were any players who had been a particular influence on her.

"I play with the Russian technique on the pedal harp, and Natalia Shameyeva has been a big influence," she revealed.

"And I would definitely say Catriona McKay. She is fantastic on both pedal harp and clarsach. She has her own particular way of playing and she is always pushing the boundaries. Also Corrina Hewat — I love her playing and arranging."

* Hannah Phillips plays at the Town House at 1pm today.

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