Emily Smith (singer)
Encyclopedia
Emily Smith is a Scottish
folk
singer from Dumfries and Galloway
. She went to school at Wallace Hall Academy
and has a degree in Scottish music
from The Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama
. She is married to New Zealand
-born fiddle
player Jamie McClennan.
Dumfries & Galloway's EMILY SMITH is one of the leading singers of the contemporary Scottish folk scene. Her powerful, clear vocals have gained her award winning, worldwide recognition. As a songwriter Emily has been likened to 'a Scottish Joni Mitchell', but as a passionate collector she is equally adept at presenting fresh and evocative interpretations of traditional songs.
Emily's childhood was spent dancing to music, rather than performing it, in her mother's dance school. She grew up assuming everyone knew how to do a highland fling and weekends were spent dancing at ceilidhs rather than nightclubs. Aged seven she started out on piano; moved onto snare drum in the local pipe band and subsequently found a passion for piano accordion, where at the age of eighteen she was National Mod champion. But it wasn't until a solo with the school choir in her late teens that Emily discovered her singing voice. She moved to Glasgow in 1999 where she gained an Honours degree in Scottish Music from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. With principal study of Scots Song, she also studied accordion and piano.
Winning BBC Radio Scotland's Young Traditional Music of the Year Award in 2002 gave Emily the confidence and impetus she needed to pursue a career in music. In the same year she met New Zealand born multi-instrumentalist Jamie McClennan who had travelled to Scotland to pursue his own music career. Jamie joined Emily's band initially on fiddle and has been an integral part of her sound ever since, helping to arrange and produce Emily's albums and has now settled into the role of lead guitarist in her band.
Emily soon found her interpretation of traditional Scots songs coupled with her own compositions were gathering appeal both in the UK and further afield and the last eight years have seen her regularly perform to audiences throughout Europe, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, USA and Canada.
Emily has released three solo albums with her fourth; 'Traiveller's Joy' to be launched at Celtic Connections in January 2011.
Emily was the first ever winner from Scotland when her song 'Edward of Morton' won the Folk Category of the USA Songwriting Competition in 2005. Another of her songs, 'Always a Smile', about the life of her Polish grandmother, was short listed in the final ten.
Her 2008 release 'Too long Away' again brought awards when in the same year she was named 'Scots Singer of the Year' by public vote at the Scots Trad Music Awards.
In 2009 Emily and Jamie released a duo album titled 'Adoon Winding Nith' to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the birth of Scotland's bard Robert Burns, who at one time lived only a few miles from where Emily grew up.
Smith's new release, Traiveller's Joy, features songs written on the road throughout 2010 beautifully blending alongside traditional material sourced from the travelling people of Scotland. Emily continues to draw inspiration from her home area of rural Dumfriesshire in South West Scotland but this release sees her writing from a more personal viewpoint than before.
Covers include Rick Kemp's 'Somewhere Along the Road', which Emily recently performed on BBC1's 'Songs of Praise' and 'Waltzing's For Dreamers' by Richard Thompson, whom Emily opened for on his UK tour in 2009 and was subsequently featured at London's Meltdown Festival 2010 during his year as curator.
Guest musicians feature an international line up including Nashville's Stuart Duncan on fiddle, Dublin's Alan Doherty on flute and whistles, Australia's James Fagan on bouzouki and Icelandic/Scot Signy Jakobsdottir on percussion with regular band mates Duncan Lyall on double bass and producer Jamie McClennan on guitar and fiddle.
Alongside her solo career Emily has worked with an array of artists from the folk scene and beyond including Phil Cunningham, Eddi Reader, Beth Nielsen Chapman, Karine Polwart and Chris Wood.
Recent TV appearances include:
• BBC Songs of Praise
• Transatlantic Sessions 4
• Scotland's Hogmanay Show (broadcast live from Edinburgh Castle)
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
folk
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
singer from Dumfries and Galloway
Dumfries and Galloway
Dumfries and Galloway is one of 32 unitary council areas of Scotland. It was one of the nine administrative 'regions' of mainland Scotland created in 1975 by the Local Government etc. Act 1973...
. She went to school at Wallace Hall Academy
Wallace Hall Academy
Wallace Hall Academy is a secondary school located in Thornhill, Dumfries and Galloway in the southwest of Scotland, currently with a roll of over 600 pupils aged from 11 to 65. In 2005 it was awarded the Schools of Ambition award...
and has a degree in Scottish music
Music of Scotland
Scotland is internationally known for its traditional music, which has remained vibrant throughout the 20th century, when many traditional forms worldwide lost popularity to pop music...
from The Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama
Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama
The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland is a conservatoire of music, drama, and dance in the centre of Glasgow, Scotland. Founded in 1845 as the Glasgow Educational Association, it is the busiest performing arts venue in Scotland...
. She is married to New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
-born fiddle
Fiddle
The term fiddle may refer to any bowed string musical instrument, most often the violin. It is also a colloquial term for the instrument used by players in all genres, including classical music...
player Jamie McClennan.
Dumfries & Galloway's EMILY SMITH is one of the leading singers of the contemporary Scottish folk scene. Her powerful, clear vocals have gained her award winning, worldwide recognition. As a songwriter Emily has been likened to 'a Scottish Joni Mitchell', but as a passionate collector she is equally adept at presenting fresh and evocative interpretations of traditional songs.
Emily's childhood was spent dancing to music, rather than performing it, in her mother's dance school. She grew up assuming everyone knew how to do a highland fling and weekends were spent dancing at ceilidhs rather than nightclubs. Aged seven she started out on piano; moved onto snare drum in the local pipe band and subsequently found a passion for piano accordion, where at the age of eighteen she was National Mod champion. But it wasn't until a solo with the school choir in her late teens that Emily discovered her singing voice. She moved to Glasgow in 1999 where she gained an Honours degree in Scottish Music from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. With principal study of Scots Song, she also studied accordion and piano.
Winning BBC Radio Scotland's Young Traditional Music of the Year Award in 2002 gave Emily the confidence and impetus she needed to pursue a career in music. In the same year she met New Zealand born multi-instrumentalist Jamie McClennan who had travelled to Scotland to pursue his own music career. Jamie joined Emily's band initially on fiddle and has been an integral part of her sound ever since, helping to arrange and produce Emily's albums and has now settled into the role of lead guitarist in her band.
Emily soon found her interpretation of traditional Scots songs coupled with her own compositions were gathering appeal both in the UK and further afield and the last eight years have seen her regularly perform to audiences throughout Europe, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, USA and Canada.
Emily has released three solo albums with her fourth; 'Traiveller's Joy' to be launched at Celtic Connections in January 2011.
Emily was the first ever winner from Scotland when her song 'Edward of Morton' won the Folk Category of the USA Songwriting Competition in 2005. Another of her songs, 'Always a Smile', about the life of her Polish grandmother, was short listed in the final ten.
Her 2008 release 'Too long Away' again brought awards when in the same year she was named 'Scots Singer of the Year' by public vote at the Scots Trad Music Awards.
In 2009 Emily and Jamie released a duo album titled 'Adoon Winding Nith' to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the birth of Scotland's bard Robert Burns, who at one time lived only a few miles from where Emily grew up.
Smith's new release, Traiveller's Joy, features songs written on the road throughout 2010 beautifully blending alongside traditional material sourced from the travelling people of Scotland. Emily continues to draw inspiration from her home area of rural Dumfriesshire in South West Scotland but this release sees her writing from a more personal viewpoint than before.
Covers include Rick Kemp's 'Somewhere Along the Road', which Emily recently performed on BBC1's 'Songs of Praise' and 'Waltzing's For Dreamers' by Richard Thompson, whom Emily opened for on his UK tour in 2009 and was subsequently featured at London's Meltdown Festival 2010 during his year as curator.
Guest musicians feature an international line up including Nashville's Stuart Duncan on fiddle, Dublin's Alan Doherty on flute and whistles, Australia's James Fagan on bouzouki and Icelandic/Scot Signy Jakobsdottir on percussion with regular band mates Duncan Lyall on double bass and producer Jamie McClennan on guitar and fiddle.
Alongside her solo career Emily has worked with an array of artists from the folk scene and beyond including Phil Cunningham, Eddi Reader, Beth Nielsen Chapman, Karine Polwart and Chris Wood.
Recent TV appearances include:
• BBC Songs of Praise
• Transatlantic Sessions 4
• Scotland's Hogmanay Show (broadcast live from Edinburgh Castle)
Solo albums
- A Day Like Today (2002)
- A Different Life (2005)
- Too Long Away (2008)
- Traiveller's Joy (2011)
Collaborations and guest appearances
- Karine PolwartKarine PolwartKarine Polwart is a Scottish singer-songwriter. She writes and performs music with a strong folk and roots feel, her songs dealing with a variety of issues from alcoholism to genocide...
– FaultlinesFaultlines (album)Faultlines is the debut studio album by Scottish folk musician Karine Polwart, released on January 19, 2004.Faultlines won the Best Album award at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, with the track "The Sun's Comin' Over The Hill" winning Best Original Song and Polwart herself receiving the Horizon Award...
(2003) - Various Artists – Darwin Song ProjectDarwin Song ProjectDarwin Song Project is a compilation album, released on September 7, 2009. It features folk artists from the UK and North America, who were tasked with the creation of new songs that had a "resonance and relevance to Charles Darwin". The artists gathered together for 7 days in a farmhouse in...
(March 2009) - Transatlantic Sessions 4 (October 2009)
- Adoon Winding Nith – with Jamie McClennan (November 2009)
Awards
- BBC Radio ScotlandBBC Radio ScotlandBBC Radio Scotland is BBC Scotland's national English-language radio network. It broadcasts a wide variety of programming, including news, sport, light entertainment, music, the arts, comedy, drama, history and lifestyle...
Young Traditional Musician Award (2002) - Scots Trad Music AwardsScots Trad Music AwardsThe Scots Trad Music Awards celebrate Scotland's traditional music in all its forms and create a high profile opportunity to bring the music and music industry into the spotlight of media and public attention.-2010:...
: Scots Singer of the Year (2008)