Musical background

Since early childhood Anne Lorne Gillies has always had a thoroughly eclectic approach to music. Her maternal grandparents were both classical violinists. Her grandfather was a professional conductor with his own orchestra, which played the full classical repertoire around England and Wales. Her mother was a cellist.

Anne Gillies was brought up in the Scottish Highlands, in a tiny crofthouse with neither plumbing nor electricity. But her home was always bursting with books and music: one day chamber music, the next fiddling, piping, accordeon and jew’s harp. Anne’s Granny began teaching her the piano from the age of four, and throughout her schooldays she performed at concerts and shows around Argyll: as a country dancer, a pianist, and a singer – in folk-groups, Gaelic choirs, Gilbert and Sullivan, oratorio, and above all as a solo Gaelic singer with a particular interest in the traditional repertoire.

Anne began learning traditional Gaelic songs from the Rector of Oban High School, John MacLean – brother of renowned Gaelic poet Sorley MacLean, and Calum MacLean, the distinguished folk-collector and co-founder (with Hamish Henderson) of the School of Scottish Studies. Oban then was home to some fine tradition-bearers, notably the Uist piper and singer Alasdair Boyd – from whom Anne learned several songs. Having won the Mòd Gold Medal for singing when she was just 17, she left Oban for Edinburgh University, where she spent four years as the devoted student of the Rev. William Matheson - “indisputably the most distinguished scholar of the Gaelic literary and historical tradition”.