Search - Savourna Stevenson :: Tweed Journey

The best of all the excellent albums by this artist

Alyss | New Jersey USA | 04/21/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"It is a crime that Savourna Stevenson's recordings aren't widely available in the USA -- they can even be hard to get hold of in England. Her first album, Tickled Pink, presents a fine collection of the sort of material you expect from Celtic harpists -- an extremely good album, but nothing extraordinary. Stevenson's progress from that point, though, has been astonishing. Her later albums mix influences from all sorts of unexpected sources, primarily jazz; if you've not heard jazz played on the clarsach (Celtic harp) -- sounds improbable, doesn't it? -- then you have no idea what a delight you're missing. Tweed Journey is perhaps the best of all her albums, and certainly the one I'd recommend to anyone trying Stevenson's music for the first time. It starts in fairly orthodox fashion, but then slowly develops from Celtic-style roots into jazz, the course of the river Tweed from source to estuary symbolizing Stevenson's own musical journey from her roots to her later compositions. The final, long track, which fuses all that has gone before it, is one of the most exciting pieces of music ever made.Every person to whom I've played this album, no matter their musical tastes, has immediately fallen in love with it."