Aged five, Kate Young spotted a piano in a junkshop and something clicked. Pester power kicked in and this exotic contraption was hers. Fast forward to her teenage years and the fiddle became her instrument of choice, fostered by initiatives such as the Edinburgh Youth Gaitherin programme of workshops. 

‘But I also wanted to be Tori Amos on the piano,’ she says. ‘I had these two very different worlds going on for ages. I was absolutely obsessed with the songwriting world. It seemed this very magical, mysterious thing but also a solitary world, while the fiddle was a passport to fun and pals and going out, and it still is. I see taking my fiddle out to the pub as basically going clubbing.’ 

While studying traditional music at Newcastle University, she encountered US fiddler Laura Cortese singing and playing fiddle at the same time. ‘Tori Amos and fiddling came together in my brain,’ she says. ‘That blew my mind. But I still come back to the piano a lot. I see it as a visual mind map for harmonies.’ The Midlothian musician is all about creative connections and her next epiphany was discovering the ethno-music camps of Europe where musicians from around the world gather to teach their fellow attendees a tune in their tradition. ‘Automatically there’s a world music orchestra,’ she says. ‘There’s nothing like it. It’s this amazing network.’

Consequently, Young formed her own string quintet with musicians from France, Sweden, Austria and Slovenia who will accompany her as she tours her debut solo album. Umbelliferæ was inspired by the plant-lore of the British Isles and the historical medicinal properties of the flora on our doorstep. ‘I love all the plant names,’ says Young, who has studied herbalism. ‘You’ve got the Latin botanical names which are sometimes really mad and then you’ve got the folklore. One plant might have a completely different name depending on what region you find it in and then attached to it are different legends and stories. It’s about a type of intelligence that we don’t really use these days.’

This botanical suite started life as a pre-pandemic Celtic Connections commission, its composition blossoming for Young as she embraced what she now understands to be synesthesia. As she describes it, ‘you play a note on the piano and you see a colour. Most people agree that C is red but I’ve heard other people say it’s blue and I’m like “no, it’s not!” After a couple of months I started having mad dreams and I remember asking “what comes next?” and my brain would give it to me as a visual landscape. In that moment I realised I just happen to be putting this idea out as music but it could be a dance movement, it could be a painting. Synesthesia is essentially a bridging from one sense to another. I feel it could be dormant in a lot of people but it depends how much attention you give it and how much you work with it.’

Kate Young plays The Tolbooth, Stirling, Tuesday 1 October; Umbelliferæ is out now on Meaw Records.