The Queen's Hall was at capacity - for performers as well as for the audience. The massed choirs contained representatives from Dingwall, Nairn and Inverness, along with singers from Mull. These visitors swelled the five Gaelic Choirs of Edinburgh, and six-piece Cliar provided instrumental accompaniment and wonderful harmonies. If you have not heard the intensity of free heterophony, it can take your breath away. A Celtic knot is woven around the core of the tune.
Voices intermingle in free expression of ornamentation.
It is a singing style found nowhere else in Western Europe, and it has strong parallels in the Middle East. As a musical form it is intense - as an act of worship it is sublime. The newer spiritual music was no less inspiring. Then, Donnie Murdo MacLeod's voice was given a gentle accompaniment from fiddle and clarsach, linking the sounds of Scots traditional music with these songs of faith. The night had a universal as well as Scottish feel.