When Claire M Singer was told about an organ in Forgue Kirk, close to the Aberdeenshire village where she was brought up, it carved open a world of possibilities for the composer who also works as organ music director at Union Chapel in London. Drawing inspiration from her walks in the Cairngorms, she created Saor, the first of a planned triptych of albums released on Touch, an experimentally inclined label. 

Having begun her musical life as a cellist and composition student, Singer fell for the organ after experimenting with stops and pedals in a way that saw her manipulating air rather than playing the instrument in a conventional fashion. Instead of producing something wilfully arid or austere, there is an emotional warmth to Singer’s work on both Saor and her previous Touch releases that began in 2016 with Solas. This reflects her response to the source of her inspiration.

‘The most natural thing for me to do when I get home is to get in the car and drive to Lochnagar and Loch Muick and just walk around,’ Singer says. ‘Being in that area, I just feel completely myself. That has always been the fuel for me to survive. Obviously that place, and the Cairngorms, and climbing, just inspires me most of all.’ Tracks on Saor (pronounced ‘sieur’, as in ‘monsieur’) are named after Munros that Singer has climbed, with little interludes between to explore the mechanics of her instrument. The album’s title track, meanwhile, is a just shy of 25-minutes epic that translates from Scottish Gaelic as ‘Free’.

This was a commission by arts and music charity, The Richard Thomas Foundation, and was recorded in one take at Orgelpark, the Amsterdam-based concert hall for organists. With the centre containing numerous organs, Singer ran between five instruments to create the piece. ‘I think I got my steps in that day,’ she says of the experience in a place she describes as ‘Disneyland for organists’.

Singer is possibly best known to many for her soundtrack to Annabel Jankel’s 2018 film Tell It To The Bees, based on Fiona Shaw’s novel of the same name. ‘It was probably the steepest learning curve of my life musically, just because I had to learn on the job; also it was such a different kind of ball game because I’m such a long-form composer, and then I was given 30 seconds. I’m usually just taking breath at this point.’

It is Saor, however, on which Singer literally pulls out all the stops. ‘In my studio in London, all I’ve got on the walls are pictures of Munros and photos that I’ve taken when I’ve been walking. It’s just in me, and I feel like my music that comes out is completely informed by those experiences, and by those memories of being on top of them, looking out all by myself and having that feeling of being free.'

Claire M Singer: Saor is released by Touch now.