Scotland's Kaela Rowan
Acclaimed Scottish singer Kaela Rowan released The Fruited Thorn, her second solo album in August 2016. Gaining excellent reviews including a 5* rating in fRoots, the album is a collection of traditional Scottish and Irish ballads sung in Gaelic, Scots and English. The four hauntingly beautiful Gaelic ballads on the album were impressive enough to earn Kaela a nomination for “Gaelic Singer of the Year“ at the Scots Trad Music Awards in December 2016.
Kaela Rowan is best known as lead singer with the influential Scottish band Mouth Music. She recorded four albums with the band and toured globally with them in the 1990s.
Much in demand for her beautiful voice, she has recorded and performed with Eliza Carthy Band, Karen Matheson, The Mike McGoldrick Band, Nusa, Anna Murray, The Loveboat Big Band, The Bevvy Sisters and many more. Most recently she joined Shooglenifty for their acclaimed seventh album The Untied Knot, bringing a dynamic new element to the band's sound. She toured extensively with the Shoogles throughout 2015, and will record with the band again in 2017 in India.
Kaela's career highlights (so far) ...
"Singing with the great Dick Gaughan was definitely a real highlight, seeing as I ate, slept and breathed his A Handful of Earth album in my early singing days"
"Performing on the main stage at the Woodford Festival in Australia just before the bells on Hogmanay 2014/15 was incredible. The venue is a huge natural amphitheatre in the middle of the Queensland rainforest, and I sang a Gaelic air whilst Bunna Lawrie, an Australian Aboriginal singer and musician, performed an ancient fire ritual in front of a crowd of 40,000 people to bring in the new year, a real honour and such an amazing atmosphere"
"Every one of my trips to Rajasthan [Kaela has performed at Jodhpur Riff Festival four times] has been amazing, from our first performance in 2012, a dawn concert on a dais overlooking the city of Jodphur, from darkness to sunrise, with the city slowly waking below, to Shooglenifty's collaborative main stage concerts with the local manganiyar musicians (They are famous for their classical folk music. They are the groups of hereditary professional musicians, whose music has been supported by wealthy landlords and aristocrats for generations) in 2014 and 2015.
"Our first rehearsal with the Rajasthanis was unforgettable, as when those guys sing or play, they do so with incredible passion, and it's a really powerful, almost overwhelming experience to be sitting in the midst of them in while they're in full swing”
"Looking back to my younger days, just being in a session with the great Glenuig musicians Iain and Allan Macdonald was a pretty special