Caroline Mackay

With artistic influences as diverse as Strauss, Nureyev, Joni Mitchell, Cleo Laine and Anne Mortifee, Caroline's musical development has encompassed a variety of disciplines: ballet and choreography, clarinet and guitar, poetry and songwriting.

At the age of 20, she awakened her profound love for singing, and experimented passionately with opera, jazz and folk genres. She produced two recordings of original music with guitars, keyboards and percussion. Ordinary Girl and Wings received international distribution during the 1990s.

Caroline's longing for an ideal musical expression came to a climax upon hearing one day in a meditation the ethereal melodies of a Celtic Harp. In the late 1980s the instrument had just begun its renaissance and harpmakers were few and far between in North America. Four years of further search led to her importing from Scotland in 1991 a beautiful cherry wood Clarsach, hand-crafted by John Yule of Midlothian.

Caroline MackayShe named her harp Morgaine Tahirih, after Morgaine la Fee, the Lady of Avalon who walked with ease between the world of men and the world of spirit, and Tahirih the Pure One, a brilliant 19th century Persian poet and fearless educator of women, martyred for her religious allegiance to the Bab, a young Siyyid from Shiraz.

Several years of study in the classical and Celtic styles of harp playing with Kim Robertson and Sharlene Wallace as mentors brought Caroline to the second stage in the development of her company, High Spirits Music. First, her songwriting and performing abilities have been sought after by presenters from Canada, the US and Europe. She has played in many cities and towns in Western Canada, from Victoria to Port MacNeill, Vancouver to Kelowna, Nelson, Prince George and Whitehorse, Edmonton, Calgary, Regina and Swift Current, and in Ontario cities, Stratford, London, Hamilton and Goderich.

Other requests have taken Caroline on tour to LouHelen School in Michigan, a celebration of racial diversity at the church of Abraham Lincoln's family in Springfield, Illinois and to enhance sessions on Spirituality, Consultation and the 50th Anniversary of the United Nations at the Landegg University in Switzerland, as well as Bedford and London, England. Her exquisite voice accompanied by the mystical and haunting vibrations of the Celtic Harp have delighted audiences of 50 to 1000.

www.highspiritsmusic.com