Seasonal composition from Hilary de Vries

Hailing from Inverness, Scottish composer and musician Hilary de Vries has built a musical language informed by the landscapes, traditions and natural sounds of the Highlands. With birdsong, the character of Scotland’s people and the surrounding environment providing a constant source of inspiration, her compositions take shape in a space where traditional Scottish melody meets a more exploratory view of rhythm and arrangement. Her work revolves around the wire-strung clarsach, a Gaelic harp whose distinctive metal strings produce a bright, ringing resonance that gives her music much of its character.

Playing wire-strung lap harps from Ardival Harps, Hilary tunes her instruments in Pythagorean, creating the harmonious chords that underpin her compositions. Her music is recognisably tethered to Scottish tradition but it’s seldom content to follow familiar paths; strong melodic lines sit alongside pronounced rhythmic patterns and uncommon time signatures, bringing an additional sense of movement and energy to tunes that feel at once timeless and personal.

Although the clarsach remains her principal instrument, she also writes for recorder and bagpipes, extending her compositional ideas across different sounds within the Scottish musical landscape. Her recorded catalogue includes two albums of harp music, each arising from a unique source of inspiration, with the first, Cherry Blossom After Rain, taking its starting point from poetry set in Japan, translating its influence into a release that moves between concise, haiku-like compositions and longer, more reflective pieces.

Her second album, The Knockbain Road, followed after Hilary read an English translation of the Gaelic poem The Birlinn of Clanranald, which she used as the springboard for a new collection of compositions. Over the years, Hilary has worked with poets and musicians including Bill Taylor, Aonghas MacNeacail, Donald S. Murray and Kenneth Steven. Her compositions have reached audiences through local and national radio, as well as performances by other musicians, while the recent single “Minerva” was selected for the Fatea Showcase Session Spring 2026.

Now, Hilary de Vries turns towards the festive season with “Welcome the Winter Sun,” her first official Christmas single which arrives as an original acoustic instrumental built around the bell-like chime of her wire-strung clarsach. The piece embraces a seasonal atmosphere without leaning on the familiar decorations and context often associated with Christmas music, with its appeal coming from the natural warmth of the instrument and the understated character of the composition. Opened by the soft plucks of harp notes, the gentle twang of the instrument and build up sustained texture forms a delicate and dreamy soundscape that’s at once stripped back and tranportive.

With bright tones and elegant melodies crafting a charming listening experience, the single puts Hilary’s creativity and performance flair on full display, offering a subtly holiday-adjacent composition that invokes the spirit of the season in an intricate fashion. Following a body of work inspired by poetry, landscape and Scotland’s musical heritage, “Welcome the Winter Sun” feels like a natural extension of de Vries’s creative world. It presents a quieter way into the festive period, finding its seasonal mood through melody and acoustic texture via another opportunity to let a distinctive instrument and a strong melodic voice speak for themselves.

Listen to Welcome the Winter Sun below

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