Since the award winning success of her 2007 album Don't Sing Lovesongs, the young Scottish singer Maeve Mackinnon has proved herself one of the most distinctively gifted artists on today's UK folk scene- a reputation set to rise further with the release of her eagerly-anticipated follow-up, Once Upon An Olive Branch. Singing in Gaelic and English, with a repertoire spanning traditional, contemporary and now original material, Maeve is renowned equally for the eloquent emotional connection she forges with every song, communicated in a bewitchingly honeyed, husky, yet vibrantly earthy voice, and her music's dynamic interplay of boldness and sensitivity. It's a combination that saw her voted Up and Coming Artist of the year at the 2007 Scots Trad Music Awards and Don't Sing Lovesongs showcased live as a Classic Album at Celtic Connections 2008. Maeve grew up amid a music loving household in Glasgow, absorbing a rich, early diet of homegrown and international influences, from Bob Marley to The Laggan, Dick Gaughan to Bob Dylan, the Bothy Band to Victor Jara. "I learned early on to listen to words, and to songs that had some kind of social conscience", she recalls. Hence the new album's achingly poignant inclusion of Ewan MacColl's The Father's Song and of Maeve's first public foray into songwriting with the title track, The Olive Branch. Originally inspired by Gaelic during family holidays to the Hebridean island of Jura where she first performed at local cèilidhs as a teenager, Maeve began learning the language aged 17. After completing the Scottish Music degree course at the former Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, majoring in Gaelic song, she won a year's scholarship to Skye's pioneering Gaelic college, Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, going on to earn two nominations as Gaelic Singer of the Year in 2008 and 2011
