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Rachel Hair & Ron Jappy
New Scottish harp/guitar pairing talk to Steve Hunt
on. I went to a Ross Ainslie and Innes Wat- son gig at the Piping Centre and was just inspired – it was amazing!”
“I was brought up in Ullapool,” Rachel tells me, “but my folks aren’t from there, so we didn’t have a Highland family back- ground. My mum’s from Antrim and my dad is from Glasgow, but there’s no traditional music in my family – it was all classical. Both my grandpas played organ and my Glasgow family were very into choral singing – the male voice choirs and that kind of stuff. I was encouraged to play music growing up, and the music that was available in Ullapool was traditional music.”
Both musicians are now settled in Glas- gow and are in high demand as teachers as well as performers.
“T
Rachel Hair Trio which, in its most enduring incarnation, also featured Jenn Butterworth. It’s now four years since the last trio album and Rachel has returned with new guitarist and duo partner Ron Jappy. They’re on a shared musical mission back to the future [insert own ‘Great Scot!’ gag here…]
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I met up with Rachel and Ron at the Lowender Peran Festival in Cornwall in early November to find out how they got togeth- er and what they’re up to.
“I was asked to do a tour in Europe,” Rachel begins. “There are various organised touring packages that take Scots and Irish bands around – and this one was twelve gigs in Austria, Switzerland and Italy. Jenn couldn’t make it so I asked Ron if he fancied it. We found we got on fine and it went really well. Jenn was getting really busy with other things and it was increasingly difficult to even get together at the same time, so it felt like the trio had come to a natural end. The market’s changed too, I think. Festivals now seem to book bigger headline bands and fill up the bill with solo
arper Rachel Hair first appeared on our radar as an exceptional solo performer, before forming the virtuosic and adventurous
and duo acts. The duo makes financial sense and we can fit everything comfortably into one car!” “And one of the advantages of a duo is that it’s easy to find ways to comple- ment each other,” Ron adds.
“Ron’s very much into the same tunes as I am, right now,” confirms Rachel. “I’ve gone full circle and back to the traditional stuff. Although Ron plays guitar with me, his first instrument is the fiddle, so he brings that knowledge of the melodies of High- land tunes into it.”
I enquire whether the pair’s obvious
musical affinity is informed by a shared Highland upbringing? The answer, it tran- spires, isn’t that straightforward.
“I’m not actually a Highlander,” Ron clarifies, “I’m from a tiny wee fishing village called Findochty, on the north-east coast of Scotland. My parents aren’t particularly musical but my brother played fiddle at school so I became interested from there, and music took over. Rachel went to Strath- clyde and I went to what’s now the Royal Conservatoire when it was still the RSAMD (Royal Scottish Academy of Music & Drama). I was there studying traditional fiddle and didn’t really get into playing guitar until the end of my second year, so it was quite late
here’s something really nice about imparting the knowl- edge that you’ve spent so long acquiring,” says Ron. “I
work with Fèisean nan Gàidheal (the organisation which supports the develop- ment of community-based Gaelic arts tuition festivals throughout Scotland), some local authorities, one-to-one private students and workshops at festivals.” “I’m very lucky in that a lot of the harp festivals around the world invite me out to teach,’ adds Rachel. “There’s a real international circuit of that and I’ve worked hard at becoming a good group harp teacher and at knowing which tunes work in those situ- ations. I also teach once a month over on the Isle Of Man, which I’m really excited about. There’s been a real upsurge of harp- ing over there and I’ve currently got twen- ty-six students.”
Rachel ends by telling me what to expect from the duo’s forthcoming debut album.
“Some are tunes that I’ve written and some I’ve researched myself, but mainly the pair of us sat down with all the books. We’re both a bit obsessed with The Simon Fraser Collection (which ‘brings together the Airs and Melodies peculiar to the High- lands of Scotland and the Isles from 1715 to 1745’) The Kerr Collection – which I picked up in a second-hand bookshop last Summer – The Atholl Collection, some of the piping books, Scott Skinner. There’s also a couple written by friends like Calum Stewart’s Looking At A Rainbow Through A Dirty Window, which I’ve been teaching for years and is really popular in the harp world now.
Sparks is released on 29th March.
rachelhair.com
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