Scottish clarsach player Rachel Groves has been named the BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician for 2026. As part of her prize, Groves will participate in a recording session with BBC Radio Scotland and give performances at the Scots Trad Music Awards and HebCelt, the Hebridean Celtic Festival in Stornoway.
“Scottish trad music is what I play, but I really enjoy playing with different musicians and I enjoy collaborating with people who come from a different perspective to my own,” she told the BBC’s Radio Scotland Breakfast program. “I also played the piano growing up, but it’s all about what instrument you connect to, and I think I got lucky.”
Based in Glasgow, Groves leads the Scolty Harp Ensemble in the northeast of Scotland and teaches clarsach, the Scottish lever harp. A graduate of Berklee College of Music in Valencia and the University of Edinburgh, she says her stylistic influences include jazz, classical, and global folk music.
The prize was announced at a show featuring performances by six finalists at Celtic Connections festival in Glasgow, broadcast live on Feb. 1 on BBC Radio Scotland and BBC Alba. The other five finalists included Calum McGregor (piano and piano accordion), Craig Harrison (fiddle), Ewen Rorie (fiddle), Gregor Niven (accordion), and Iona Fyfe (Scots singer). Entrants in the award contest must be aged between 18 and 27, and have lived in Scotland for at least one year immediately prior to the entry date.
