Anne Lorne Gillies

Anne Lorne Gillies
Anne Lorne Gillies
Background information
Born	1944 (age 72-73) Stirling, Scotland
Genres	Scottish folk music
Occupation(s)	Singer, writer, language activist

Anne Lorne Gillies (Scottish Gaelic: Anna Latharna NicGillìosa) is a singer, writer and Gaelic activist. She is a classically trained musician, with a deep-rooted understanding of Scottish culture, and a professional singer/songwriter who moves convincingly from the traditional Gaelic song repertoire to operatic arias; from the songs of Robert Burns and of St Kilda. She was born in Stirling in 1944, and raised on a croft in Argyll from the age of five.

Gillies' musical upbringing was wide-ranging. Her maternal grandparents were professional classical violinists, and Gillies learned piano from an early age. While a pupil at Oban High School she was inspired by many of her teachers, especially her English teacher, the poet Iain Crichton Smith, and John Maclean, the Rector (Headmaster) of the school, a native of the Island of Raasay, classical scholar and brother of poet Sorley Maclean, from whom she learned a large number of Gaelic songs and to whom she dedicated her seminal book Songs of Gaelic Scotland (Birlinn, Edinburgh, 2005).

In her teens, Gillies sang, danced and played at cèilidhs, concerts and Mòds, and even introduced a touch of Gaelic culture to BBC Radio Scotland's Children's Hour. She also took advantage of the wide variety of amateur musical and theatrical productions which Oban offered, from school-based folk-group, baroque ensemble, debating society and drama productions to local bands, Gilbert and Sullivan productions and public speaking.

In 1962, three months after leaving Oban High School, she won the coveted Women's Gold Medal for singing at the Royal National Mòd an honour which brought with it a raft of opportunities to perform in concerts, tours, folk-clubs and festivals on both sides of the Border.

Highlights from this early period of Gillies' career include singing at large-scale Gaelic concerts on the official programme of the Edinburgh International Festival (Usher Hall, Leith Town Hall); appearing in the first of many live Hogmanay shows (1964) to an audience of over 20 million people; taking part in an iconic televised folk concert in Glasgow's Kelvin Hall, organised by poet/folklorist Hamish Henderson, singing alongside legendary Scots and Irish traditional performers such as Jeannie Robertson and The Chieftains. Following this appearance Gillies struck up an unlikely but fruitful musical partnership with Jimmy MacBeath, an itinerant worker and singer of Bothy Ballads from the north east of Scotland. During these early years Gillies also gave regular radio recitals of a capella Gaelic song on BBC Scotland, and sang on the early BBC Gaelic black-and-white television series Songs all the Way.