Composers Craig Armstrong and Calum Martin tell Teddy Jamieson how they are giving new life to indigenous Scottish music

CRAIG Armstrong first heard Gaelic psalm singing in church when he was just nine or 10. Although he grew up in the east end of Glasgow, his mum was originally from Balintore in Rossshire, and on family visits they’d all go to church.

“It just so happened that in the church in Hilton they were doing Gaelic psalm singing,” Armstrong recalls as he sits in his studio in Glasgow.

“So, sitting in the congregation, I remember looking at my dad, thinking, ‘What is this?’ It stuck with me.”

Armstrong grew up to be a composer and arranger, one of Scotland’s most famous, called on by pop stars such as Madonna and film directors like Baz Luhrmann to sprinkle his magic over their records and films. But he never forgot that childhood experience in church. “I would say the psalm singing was the first indigenous Scottish music that really grabbed me,” he says.

And then in 2014 he was introduced to fellow composer Calum Martin. Martin is also a precentor – the person leading the singing – in the Back Free Church in Stornoway. He is one of the people who performs Gaelic psalm singing. Out of that meeting came a chance to do something new with this traditional form.

The result is The Edge of the Sea, a new album that features two pieces which combine the keening notes of Gaelic singers from Lewis and Harris, who would normally sing unaccompanied, with a soundbed composed by Armstrong as played by the Scottish Ensemble.

The pieces were initially performed live, but this 2018 recording is now being released on Christian Kellersmann’s new German label Modern Recordings.