At one of the busiest times of her life, Julie Fowlis is putting Hollywood on hold and taking herself off to a deserted Scottish island.
The Gaelic singer is to appear at this year’s Hebridean Celtic Festival with her acclaimed film and musical work Heisgeir, based on the history, people and landscape of the uninhabited Monach Islands.
Julie, one of the first inductees to the HebCelt Hall of Fame and an ambassador for the event, will perform at An Lanntair on 14 July, the final day of the four-day flagship event.
The show will be staged just a few days before the US release of Brave, the new animated 3D blockbuster by Pixar, which is set to turn the North Uist star into a global sensation. Julie’s song Tha Mo Ghaol Air Aird A’ Chuain (My Love is on The High Seas) features in a new TV advert for the film and was premiered during the Oscars earlier this month.
Ahead of the film’s release, and the expected media frenzy, Julie is waiting to give birth to her second child in the next few weeks but plans to be back on stage by May.
Her visit to HebCelt is one she is particularly looking forward to. She said: “HebCelt is a highlight of the year for me. It’s a great place to come back to, especially as the piece we are doing is very much an island project and a little bit different to what we have done before.
“I’m delighted to be bringing it to HebCelt and looking forward to presenting ourselves in a different way this year.”
Heisgeir is an hour-long feature film with a musical soundtrack and was inspired by Julie’s connection to the Atlantic islands off North Uist which were abandoned in the 1940s.
Her great great grandmother was from Heisgeir and stories from former residents, including Lachie Morrison, a member of the last family to live there, help tell the evocative story.
The work, which also features acclaimed musicians Éamon Doorley, Ross Martin and Duncan Chisholm, was commissioned for last year’s Blas festival and was completed in three months, during which time Julie made her first visit to the islands. It was backed by the national Gaelic development body Bòrd na Gàidhlig, while Creative Scotland is helping take the show to HebCelt as well as to festivals in Gigha, Skye and Uist in 2012.
“Very often I have ideas for things in my head that I would like to do, but you need someone to give you a chance to do it and, more importantly, a deadline”, said Julie. “With Heisgeir we were given that chance and knuckled down and did the research and filming in a few months.
“The family connection was one of the reasons I was interested in it. Also, when you look out from the west coast of North Uist you can see Heisgeir and it just seemed ridiculous that it was so close yet I knew so little about the place, its history, its songs..
“I wanted to learn more about it and it was a very inspiring place to visit. I went there twice in the summer and it was wonderful to try to convey the magic of the place through this project.”
Heisgeir started as a music-based work with some film but quickly changed: “Rather than me tell the stories second hand, I really wanted the audience to hear them the way I heard them”, Julie added. “As the film was so powerful it became apparent very early on that it would become a film-based project first and foremost.
“The paramenters changed from what I initially thought we would do. We went with the creative process and let it be what it wanted to be rather than what we expected it to be.
“It took its own way and we let it do that; the different stories brought the whole thing together. We recorded and listened to people and there just seemed to be a very natural way to bring all that together.
“It’s very exciting but also nerve-wracking to so something so different to what we usually do at HebCelt. But we are thrilled to bring it to the festival, and especially to An Lanntair, which is a great place to play and has such a wonderful atmosphere.”
Now in its 17th year, HebCelt will be headlined by The Waterboys, The Proclaimers and Kassidy.
The festival attracts visitors from around the world and already fans from across Europe, the USA and Canada have snapped up tickets which can be bought online atwww.hebceltfest.com
Festival Director, Caroline MacLennan, said: “We are delighted that Julie is returning to HebCelt with her show Heisgeir in what is shaping up to be another hugely successful year for her. When we heard about this project we immediately knew it should have a platform at the festival.
“Julie has come through the ranks and played her part in the success of HebCelt over the years. She is now a renowned ambassador for the event and the Gaelic culture, as well as being an inspiration to young artistes locally and further afield.”
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