Spotlight: Maeve Gilchrist
Edinburgh born harpist and composer Maeve Gilchrist has taken the Celtic (lever) Harp to new levels of performance and visibility. Maeve tours internationally as a solo artist and maintains a variety of projects. Her most recent independently-released album, The Harpweaver, was described by the Irish Times as “buoyant, sprightly and utterly beguiling….a snapshot of a musician at the top of her game.” Maeve is the co-music director of the WGBH holiday show, a Christmas Celtic sojourn, and the co-artistic director of the brand new Rockport Celtic Music festival – an innovative new festival focused on cross-curation and the outer-fringes of Celtic Music.
Can you please share a bit about your journey as a musician and how you became involved with Silkroad?
My first Silkroad engagement was as a guest at their Global Musician's Workshop at DePauw University in Indiana. I was immediately struck by the emphasis on the philosophy behind the notes. Why we do what we do and how to embark on this type of cross-cultural collaboration in an organic and authentic way.
From there, I started doing the odd concert appearance with Silkroad and during the Pandemic I found myself much more involved in organizational conversations as Rhiannon Giddens came on as our Artistic Director. In a way, the enforced stillness of early lock-down in 2020 created an opportunity for talking about our vision for the future of Silkroad and how we'd like to move forward as a group.
How do you stay inspired and creative, especially during challenging times or periods of uncertainty?
As long as I stay curious, I stay inspired. I feel that it's my responsibility as an artist to search for beauty and interest in the nooks and crannys of every single day. To utilize my imagination like a muscle that needs daily stretching in order to provide a stream of compositional ideas, aspirational sounds and poetry. My personal process is almost always going inwards to find a seed of an idea, a little detail that begs exploration. Rather than reflecting the world around me, I want to create a new world from the inside out that is intriguing enough to engage and offer a place of respite that can unite an audience as one.
What is one of your favorite memories while working with Silkroad?
Too many to mention!! Moments of delight as I recognize myself in others and unexpected cultural intersections that seem to make the world a much more intimate place. Introductions to the best of people from across the globe and windows into their own creative process. I think it's the people more than anything. Music-making brings incredible humanity out of both the players and the listeners and I've had so many emotional moments of connectivity with people on both sides of the stage. Getting to write music for such a diverse array of instruments is a challenge and a delight and then hearing it come to life as each musician puts their own individual stamp on it and frames the music with their own vocabulary, ornamentation, phrasing, tuning or improvisation. Second life!
There's been hikes on the road, late-night wine-drinking on the tour bus, introductions to new cuisine, 80s dance parties and all in the context of being educated in ways of the world. It's a celebration of difference in a way that makes us feel much closer and I'm honored to be part of it!
What is one piece of advice you would give to a budding artist?
It might not feel very glamorous, but the best piece of advice I was given at college was: Make yourself indispensable to every professional situation in which you find yourself. Go that extra mile, take initiative and treat every engagement with energy and a view of the big picture. Make everyone around sound as good as possible and you'll climb the ladder.
How do you see music as a tool for social change and connection, especially in today's world?
Music can create an unparalleled emotional response in the listener. This is an opportunity to make people FEEL in a completely unique way and the result of that strength of feeling can be monumental. People write policy and change laws based on feeling. People treat others with malice or empathy depending on how they feel. How one feels is a life altering experience so I don't think it's hyperbolic to say that if we have a modicum of success in creating feelings of communion and harmony through our music, we can expect a ripple effect as that good will travels through the world.
What sort of projects or activities are you working on outside of Silkroad?
My own music, I write and tour under my own name. I recently complete a new concerto for Celtic Harp and Orchestra that was premiered by the Virginia Symphony in March. I've just finished creating a new show inspired by the Antartic Exploration of the early 20th century with the phenomneal Irish music Seamus Egan. That will be released and routing in 2025. I've got a new album in the works! I work a lot as a harper and arranger for the Grammy-winning NYC-based Pakistani singer, Arooj Aftab. Her new album, 'Night Reign' is about to drop and I'm very proud of how it's come out. I won't be touring quite as much as usual this year as I have a 6 month old baby. She's a total delight and it's a new chapter as I embark on motherhood and finding the balance between my music life and my home life. Not much sleep but my life feels very rich.