Biography

Cheyenne Brown is from Alaska but has been based in Scotland for the past thirteen years where she has studied the Scottish harp from both a performance and a research perspective and works to perform and teach the Scottish harp locally and abroad.

Cheyenne’s trio, the North Atlantic Project (harp, dobro, bass, formally the North Atlantic Project), recently released their debut CD – Some Part of Something:  “flawless coming together of cross-genre, mixed influence, multicultural music… sublimely melodic and intensely gorgeous” (Folkwords). The trio fuses bluegrass, Appalachian, and Scottish textures in a unique instrument combination.

Cheyenne’s solo CD, Parallel Latitudes, is an all harp-lead collection of Scottish and contemporary tunes accompanied by dobro, tabla, cello, banjo, fiddle and percussion.  She also performs and tours with a variety of groups. Her duo with cellist and Scots singer Seylan Baxter in 2007 released the album 2:forty, and have since toured in the US, Germany, Italy, Belgium, and Spain and extensively throughout the United Kingdom. Most recently, they toured in Spain with the Spanish group Acetre. Cheyenne also performs (and currently recording!) with Thomas Zöller’s Homebound concerts throughout Germany, Belgium and the UK.

Cheyenne gained an Honours degree in Scottish music from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow in 2006, where she had a full scholarship from the Associated Board of Music. In November of 2009, she was awarded an MSc in Scottish Ethnology from the University of Edinburgh. The research-based masters degree allowed her to carry out fieldwork in never-before studied areas of the Scottish harp. She researched the development in the construction of the Scottish harp since its revival in the 1930s through to today’s modern builders.

Cheyenne is in high demand as a harp tutor on both sides of the Atlantic, having taught for the Ohio Scottish Arts School, Common Ground on the Hill, and the Washington Area Folk Harp Society (all in the US), and the Gaelic College at St Ann’s in Cape Breton. She travels regularly to teach in Germany and northern Europe.  In Scotland she maintains a full rota of private students as well as teaching for the Edinburgh International Harp Festival, Clarsach Society events, and Feis across the country (Gaelic music festivals). She has re-founded and is past convenor of the Glasgow Branch of the Clarsach Society and is involved in running monthly harp workshops in Glasgow. She also co-founded the Scottish Harp and Cello Festival in 2006, which has completed its third successful year. She is also the editor of the Scottish Harp Society of America’s quarterly journal, the Kilt & Harp.

Cheyenne’s playing style is characteristically free and creative, making much use of improvisation and contrasting textures.