Inverness rose window inspiration puts Highland musician Grace Stewart-Skinner in frame for MB Alba Scottish Trad Music Award
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A TALENTED Highland musician encouraged to continue her studies by an inspirational choir conductor is up for an award.
Nominations for the MB Alba Scottish Trad Music Awards have opened and amongst the nominees is Grace Stewart-Skinner, whose composition on clàrsach, The Rose Window, has been nominated in the category of Original Work.
Members of the public will decide the winners.
Grace is a former pupil of Dingwall Academy who has since graduated with honours in Celtic from Edinburgh University.
While still a Dingwall Academy pupil, she was encouraged in her studies for Advanced Higher Music by well-loved choir director Kirsteen MacLennan, nee Menzies, who recently passed away.
She went on to win the school’s Dingwall Gaelic Choir Quaich for Outstanding Contribution to Music and Lorna Wildman Eulogy Rosebowl for Outstanding Contribution to Dingwall Academy in 2018.
In that year, Grace was also the recipient of the Ross and Cromarty Lord Lieutenant’s Award for the Arts.
The Rose Window was inspired by memories of the iconic architectural feature at the head of Academy Street in Inverness.
Costing £1200 at the time, it is recorded in Highland Archive Service records as being "the gift of a friend" and later church records confirm the benefactor as James Keith, a bookseller from Dingwall.
SEE ALSO: Restoration of famous rose window is now under way
Do you know about rose window's links to Dingwall?
It was home to the Stewart Restaurant from the 1930s until its closure in the 1970s. Formerly a Methodist Church, the building was taken on by Grace’s great-grandfather, the late James Bruce Stewart, opened as a popular restaurant and run as a family business.
The piece was commissioned as part of the Spirit of the Highlands project, Spirit 360 – Spirit 360 and appears on their website.
The window itself has been in storage for the whole of Grace’s life, so she did not see it in real life until last year, when a small part of the protective cladding shifted to reveal the stunning stained glass.
She used an audio recording of spoken reminiscences of the window and what it represented to restaurant customers as a basis for her composition.
She said: “I considered the era in which the restaurant was best remembered and the rhythm of the spoken words when I was composing the piece. I want the listener to feel as though they are looking through the window and back in time."
Grace’s current projects include exploring the experimental possibilities of the clàrsach with Anam artist collaborative in Glasgow, bringing music to people who have little access to performances with Live Music Now and regular live appearances at Edinburgh’s Balmoral Hotel.
She collaborated in the show Turas tro na Cluarain – A Daunder through Thistles which appeared in a number of Scottish venues, including the Nairn Book and Arts Festival. The Scotsman described her in it as “an accomplished musician whose command of the traditional Scottish harp, the clàrsach, mesmerised the audience with her gentle touch of each string.”
The MG Alba Scottish Trad Music Awards are decided by online vote, dependent on the public voting for their favourites on the “Hands Up for Trad” website.
The voting will close on Sunday, November 19 at midnight.
Winners will not be announced until the night itself, Saturday, December 2 in the Caird Hall, Dundee, with all the nominees in each category attending.
This will be Grace’s second visit to the awards, as she received the Hands Up for Trad Inspiration Award during the 2017 ceremony.
Grace is appearing live in Inverness in the duo Cionar along with vocalist Christina Stewart on Wednesday, November 22 at Eden Court’s Provost Smith Memorial Chapel.
The rose window is now being incorporated into the new multimillion-pound Inverness Castle redevelopment.
You can cast your vote here: https://projects.handsupfortrad.scot/scotstradmusicawards/voting/
