Karine Polwart
Songwriter and folk singer
Musician
Seven-times winner at The BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, including three times for Best Original Song and Folk Singer Of The Year 2018, Karine Polwart is a songwriter, musician, theatre maker, storyteller, and author. She also performs traditional songs and writes to commission for theatre, film, animation, and international thematic collaborative projects.
Recent projects include her Scottish Songbook re-imaginings of classic Scottish pop; The Lost Words: Spell Songs, a multi-artist response to environmental loss and climate breakdown.
She has worked previously with the BBC SSO, Songs of Separation, author James Robertson, documentary film-maker Anthony Baxter, and indie composer RM Hubbert.
In 2016, in association with The Royal Lyceum Theatre and Edinburgh International Festival, Karine wrote, musically directed and performed her critically-acclaimed debut work for theatre. A poetic meditation on midwifery, ecology, sanctuary, and solidarity, it combines elements of memoir, essay, myth, sound-art and song. ‘Wind Resistance’ won the Best Music And Sound Award at the CATS (Critics’ Awards for Theatre in Scotland) 2017, and the accompanying album A Pocket Of Wind Resistance written in collaboration with sound-designer Pippa Murphy, was selected as Best Album 2017 by both Songlines Magazine and BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction, and was nominated for SAY Scottish Album Of The Year.
In 2020, both the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra have commissioned new work, in collaboration with sound designer/composer Pippa Murphy.