Profile
Rachel Hair is one of one of Scotland's finest young harp players. Originally from the Highland village of Ullapool, Rachel was introduced to the clarsach (Scottish harp) through the work of the Feis movement. She has since graduated with a first class honours degree in Music from the University of Strathclyde, where she was also awarded the Alexander Stone Prize for ‘Outstanding Performance’ in her solo clarsach recital.
With family roots in both Scotland and Ireland, Rachel has developed her own style of playing traditional music on the clarsach, highly influenced from her time studying alongside folk, jazz, classical, funk, rock and pop musicians.
Rachel has been going from strength to strength as a professional musician and has steadily begun to gain recognition as a performer and a composer. Over the past year she has played several times throughout Europe, India, toured twice throughout the USA, as well as playing regularly throughout Scotland and the UK.
In January, she performed on the infamous BBC ‘Hogmanay Live’ show with top Musicians Eddie Reader, Phil Cunningham, Karen Matheson, Michael McGoldrick, John McCusker and Aly Bain.
Rachel has also performed as a soloist at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe , the much coveted Edinburgh International Harp Festival and several times at Glasgows Celtic Connections Festival, where this year she was filmed playing with Irish harper Laoise Kelly, for BBC TV .
Her solo album, "Hubcaps and Potholes", featuring mainly solo clarsach, and also pianist Douglas Miller, is currently being recorded at glo-worm studios and will be released this summer.
