Read a NEW interview by Helen St Helen for IRFT Celtic Radio
NEW review by The Celtic Music Fan
Read Phil's interview with The Celtic Music Fan
NEW review of Seascapes from Collected Sounds:
"...the music is lovely...The harp playing is beautiful, peaceful and calming. The compositions are interesting and intricate without taking anything away from (or adding too much to) the listening pleasure...Plus I’m so intrigued by this person I want to learn more."
"The timeless charm of Phil’s melodies. Stories is the second CD for harp and voice of this excellent British musician. Phil Holland tells ancestral stories, eternal, soft and sweet, like poetry. The words and music are ancient but Phil’s music is timeless."
"These are popular Celtic songs, as old as the world but remodelled and readapted by Phil Holland. From this emerges an extremely modern profile; simple, refined and minimal. Phil’s voice and the sound of her harp sweetly penetrate and magnetize the mind and heart of all who listen."
"The audience is enraptured as Phil sings pieces from her CD Stories. Her angelic
voice interweaves each tiny fragment of an enchanted world, which is present in the depths of the soul of every living being."
"We are talking about an extraordinary artiste. Phil Holland, "Scottish Celt" , with her precious voice, a true voice of the angels, is capable of giving us rare moments of happiness and dreamlike repose. There is something Madonna-like and sacred in her movements as she embraces this ancient instrument, the 26 string harp. However it is the voice that seduces. Phil plucks and caresses the strings while her voice soars naturally into the highest realms of the pentagram with that vocal skill that allows her to play with the notes with irony and agility, thus recreating those popular, ancient, northern ambiences that we rarely are lucky enough to hear "live". "
"The vibrations of the strings move the deepest part of our heart, transmitting heady sensations. Perhaps this is part of Phil Holland's secret. She is an artist able to transmit her considerable professional capacities while expressing the authentic soul of Celtic culture. This is partly because of the deep bond she has with her origins. Her work is an emotional tribute to her Scottish origins. After a series of concerts held during different international folk music festivals, it has recently been said of her: "Phil Holland touches the soul of the audience, who are fascinated by her other-worldly singing and the ancestral tones of her 26-string harp". A Celtic harp, words by unknown Scots and Irish poets, the clear voice, the musical sophistication of the original arrangements of a true interpreter and we find ourselves at the very heart of Celtic music with Phil Holland".
"The lavish feeling is not simply emotion, but rather, it becomes a parallel world made up of crystalline sounds, capacity for communication, lyricism of a fairy-tale-like quality and intense charm."
"Her not so secret weapon is her sweetness and delicacy; in the movement of her violin bow, in the plucking of the strings of her Donegal harp and in her voice, which amazes in its perfect moulding of ornamentations and long, held notes, always careful never to overdo either.
Charm and modesty are her emerging qualities which is why she is appreciated by such a wide-ranging audience.
Now on her third record, (fourth if we also consider "On the red rock" which came out in 2001 with the Divertimento Academy, a violin youth orchestra which she founded 10 years previously) Phil gives us a graceful and intense atmosphere with classics such as O’Carolan’s concerto and Morrison’s jig, with Shakespearian sonnets which she has set to music and with her own compositions.
A soloist by choice, Phil has all the qualities to make people dream if they enter into her world of faeries.
"Spread your wings and let the faery in you fly", is her invitation.
How could you possibly refuse?"
