Rachel Hair - Harpist in Scotland

Rachel Hair is one of Scotland's finest young players of the clarsach, the Scottish harp. Originally from the Highland village of Ullapool, Rachel was introduced to the clarsach 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 Glasgow's Celtic Connections Festival, where this year she was filmed playing with Irish harper Laoise Kelly, for BBC TV.

Her debut album, "Charmed", featuring mainly solo clarsach, and also pianist Douglas Miller, is currently being recorded at glo-worm studios and will be released this summer.

Currently as well as working as a soloist, and with her harp trio "Starlit 3", Rachel is involved as a presenter of "Celtic Music Radio". The radio station, which was first to air at this years Celtic Connections Festival, is hoped to be launched as a full time station later this year, with Rachel as one of the key presenters.

Wedding Ceremonies, Functions and Corporate Events

Rachel has an extensive repertoire of Scottish, Celtic, and classical music for wedding ceremonies and background music.

Music Samples

Here are some samples of her work. Just double-click on the link and it should start playing in Windows Media Player within ten seconds. If you are having trouble playing the MP3 see the Help section at the bottom of this page.