A conversation with Hamish Napier

Sitting in the Autumn sunshine round a blazing fire pit on the banks of the Spey I am enjoying spending an hour or so with a popular Scottish performer and composer who happens to live in my neck of the woods, no pun intended.  

As we gaze out at the old Spey bridge, he talks about his musical journey bringing him back to his hometown of Grantown where he now lives with his fiancée, Scottish Chamber Orchestra cellist Su-a Lee. Hamish is a talented multi-instrumentalist and composer now focusing on reconnecting with the environment through the power of music.  

So, as an incomer of three years to this beautiful area I have received a warm welcome into the world of traditional music. This has given me the opportunity to learn more about the musical heritage of the Highlands and appreciate its influence worldwide. Sitting comfortably, we chat about his latest Album ‘The Woods’ which is nominee for Album of the Year in the Scots Trad Music Awards.  This is the third of the series which started with ‘The River’ in 2016 and was followed by ‘The Railway’ in 2018. Two more are promised to complete this body of work reconnecting with The Spey and the Cairngorms. By 2025 Hamish says his ‘Strathspey Pentalogy’ of albums, comprised entirely of new compositions, will have taken him a decade to complete. 

So, the chance to spend some time with Hamish was an unexpected pleasure. We started agreeing about the need for joined up thinking in the Highlands throughout the musical community. He filled me in on the current folk world and how these days interestingly, many folk bands often have a classical musician or a jazz drummer in the group.   

Eventually we started talking about his musical journey.  Why did he choose these pathways and what drew him back to the Highlands? I learnt that he was a local boy, educated at the local school Grantown Grammar. He had an inspirational music teacher, Christine Jackson, who encouraged her pupils to expand their horizons, giving them space to explore and creating opportunities to work autonomously, encouraging him to study music. However, at the time there was not yet available a folk music course where he could take piano, wooden flute or whistle as a principal study, so he ended up studying at Glasgow University, taking instead a degree in astronomy and physics. He admits he was not a particularly good scientist! 

So, what next for an aspiring composer and musician but seven years on the road touring the world with his band winning Folk Band of the Year in 2005 at the Scots Trad Music Awards. But at heart he knew he wanted to delve deeper into music, enrolling at Strathclyde University to study piano (mostly jazz and a little classical) and composition. And then a year in Boston at the Berklee College of Music, where he was awarded a scholarship to study jazz, pop, rock, and American roots music. This blew his mind and he realised that what he really wanted to be was a composer. Returning to Glasgow, he began performing and writing with traditional groups and luminaries such as Duncan Chisholm, Ross Ainslie and Jarlath Henderson. We laughed about the time he had to play a brand new live for the BBC with only a few days’ rehearsal, successfully cementing his place in the traditional world as a multi-instrumentalist and composer.  

Wanting to compose drew him back to his roots in Grantown on Spey in the stunning Cairngorms National Park and his first solo album ‘The River’. This is overflowing with overlapping sounds of water and nature.  The fast-flowing river Spey drives the compositions, integrating the calls of the curlew, the heron, and the Spey. You know here is a powerful creative force working alongside nature. This is a mission.  

The next album ‘The Railway’ was commissioned for the opening of the beautiful new Grantown East: Highland Heritage & Cultural Centre. This work takes a different route with a similar driving force but this time mechanical with sounds or whistle, brakes, rails and steam plus supporting ensemble and of course sheep in the surrounding fields! A tribute to the many small railways which served the Highlands until the stringent Dr Beecham cuts of the 1960s. Ironically, there is now a move to restore them. There is a clear jazz influence in some of the tracks with the different tempos and rhythms. As a dancer this had a special appeal, inspiring choreography in my mind. 

We commiserated about the difficulty of getting an album made and the demise of live music at present. We agreed there is nothing like the shared experience of the real thing. The warmth of the audience is sadly missed in this digital age of Covid. Thankfully, Hamish has successfully been able to harness the internet through webcasts and online appearances. His latest offering is a work for the Scottish Storytelling Centre: a beautiful collaboration with storyteller David Francis ‘Strathspey Stories’ is a superb short film focussing on the legends and myths of his native land, and the tunes and places associated with them. Little did I know there was a Kelpie in the river at the end of my lane in Cromdale!  

Composing, he says, is about being decisive. As a composer you face a series of countless musical decisions. You need to quickly narrow things down, focus, create and then reflect on and revise your work constantly, so you can reach the ‘truth’. By that he means reaching the heart of what you need to say accurately, purely, economically and with the least amount of clutter. That is the scientist speaking.  

But finally, we at talk about his latest and I think his best album so far. There are another two (The Hills and The Sky) in the pipeline he says. ‘The Woods’ was commissioned by Cairngorms Connect, a partnership of neighbouring land managers committed to an ambitious two-hundred-year vision to enhance habitats, species and ecological processes in a 600 square km area within Cairngorms National Park. He admits ‘The Woods’ album is bigger in ambition than the previous two albums. This was an epic task with 25 new tunes, 18 Gaelic tree alphabet letters, 22 native trees, a six-thousand-word folklore booklet and dozens of birdsong and forest sounds. Each track is dedicated to different species of trees.   All wrapped up with stunning illustrations by Highland multimedia artist Somhairle MacDonald. Scientific research meets folklore meets nature meets film score. Superbly recorded with a plethora of instruments and musicians. The album is nearly twice as long as most contemporary folk albums, and very special in that it features exclusively new music. This has likely earned it a nomination for ‘Original Work of the Year’ as well as ‘Album of the Year’ at the Scots Trad Music Awards.  

I find the filmic and melodic quality of this work captivating. This is music for the soul of a city girl.  Melodic, haunting, and sophisticated by a really, really nice bloke. 

I cannot wait for the next album.