root salad Mischa MacPherson
The winners of this year’s BBC Radio 2 Young Tradition Award tell Tim Chipping how it all started.
T
he only people who didn’t expect The Mischa Macpherson Trio to win the 2014 BBC Radio 2 Young Folk Award were The Mischa
Macpherson Trio. The astonishment in their acceptance speech was genuine.
“We were adamant in our heads that
we hadn’t won,” Mischa recalls. “We all had very safe bets on a different band, and just as they were about to announce our category I saw that they had two cameras on the table where the other band were sitting. I tapped Innes on the knee and said, ‘Ah look, it’s definitely them’. And he gave me a little hug. And then they announced us. I’ve never been that sur- prised in my life.”
Just a few weeks previously the group won the similarly career-boosting Danny Kyle Award at Celtic Connections; also unsurprising to anyone who’d heard them. The Mischa Macpherson Trio are a rare and fine thing; each musician equally dazzling, distinct and assured. They sound… complete.
“I think it’s probably coming up to four years ago when we met,” says Mischa. “We know each other very, very well and it seems natural now to play together.”
Theirs is a Highland story. Mischa, Gaelic singer and clàrsachist is from the Isle of Lewis. Guitarist Innes White is also Lewis-born (although the family relocated to Dingwall), while Conal McDonagh, on pipes and whistles is from Poolewe which is “in the middle of nowhere, in a very typ- ical nowhere-looking place.”
So it was all songs and dances around a peat fire when they were growing up?
“Dancing round electric fires,” Mischa corrects. “But although we were put together in a much more modern setting, the first time I played with Conal and Innes it was in the way you’re probably thinking. We were in a blackhouse on the Isle of Lewis with a fire. And we got up every morning and made music together.”
“Put together”? Before you spit out your valerian in horror that Simon Cowell might’ve ventured into manufacturing Gaelic folk groups, we should explain that the trio were assembled as part of one of the vital Fèis Rois organisation’s summer programmes.
“They select a number of people and put you into a band. And you go on tour for four to six weeks and get paid a weekly fee – so it’s kind of like a summer internship. It was the three of us along with one other girl having the best summer of our lives.”
And it is a band, not just Mischa Macpherson and two fellas helping out. “I feel awfully guilty that the name is The
Mischa Macpherson Trio. We’d been to Australia with Fèis Rois, this was a year ago, and we’d put together a lot of songs for those concerts. And when we got back I thought it’d be nice to make a couple of studio recordings. On the day the sound- man emailed the recordings to me, the Young Folk Award popped into my head. I quickly Googled it and the deadline was midnight that night. We didn’t have a band name so we spent four hours trying to think of one but agreed that if we couldn’t it would just go down as my name. I really didn’t like it at first, but I’ve got used to it.”
One of those recordings is a vivid arrangement of Cha D'fhuair Mi'n Cadal that some may know from a version by the Julie Fowlis-fronted Dòchas. But this is no mere competent cover.
“I learnt it from the singing of Roddy Campbell from Barra, a recording of his – I never actually met him. I went to the National Centre of Excellence in Tradition- al Music at Plockton, in my second year of high school. The singing teacher there said to try and learn it like Roddy sings it. I have listened to Dòchas, but you’re really encouraged at that age to go to the fur- thest back source.”
“I learned it when I was sixteen but did-
n’t perform it or arrange it for a good three years. I like knowing a song for a long, long time before you do anything to it.”
D
espite her passion for music beginning prodigiously early, singing in local mod
competitions from the age of four (“I was determined to do it, even though you’re meant to be five”) Mischa came within a week of pursuing an entirely different vocation.
“A couple of years ago I was adamant that I wouldn’t study music. And I actually had my place at Glasgow to study psy- chology. And a week before I was about to go I realised, ‘Oh my goodness, I should’ve applied to do music.’ So I took a gap year and thought about it and applied for the Conservatoire. And it looks increasingly like this is what I want, even though I said I didn’t.”
There are still at least three years of study ahead. But the band hopes to record their debut album this year, after appear- ances at Cambridge Folk Festival, Cro- predy, Piping Live and Towersey. It would be fair say they’ve got off to a good start.
“It’s been a mad year. We were aware of the competitions when we were quite young, so we’ve always looked up to them. But the other thing is it seems we’ve stepped into this huge, engaging, warm family of folkies. That’s been an unspoken prize.”
You’re most welcome.
www.mischamacphersontrio.com F
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