Anne Lorne Gillies MA, PhD, LRAM, PGCE, Dr h.c. () is a Scottish singer, writer, and activist.
Early life Gillies was born in Stirling, Scotland in 1944 and moved to Oban at the age of 5. She attended Rockfield Primary School and Oban High School. She was Dux in Oban High School in 1962. She adopted the middle name Lorne when joining Equity Actors Union to indicate her connections with Oban. ( Lorne is a district in the Argyll and Bute council area and Oban is its capital.)
Gillies' musical upbringing spanned a wide range. Her maternal grandparents were professional classical violinists and Gillies learned to play the piano from an early age. While a pupil at Oban High School, she was inspired by many of her teachers, especially her English teacher, the poet Iain Crichton Smith, and John Maclean, the Rector (Headmaster) of the school, a native of the Island of Raasay, a classical scholar, and the brother of poet Sorley Maclean, from whom she learned a large number of Gaelic songs and to whom she dedicated her seminal book Songs of Gaelic Scotland (Birlinn, Edinburgh, 2005).
In her teens, Gillies sang, danced, and played at cèilidhs, concerts, and Mòds, and even introduced a touch of Gaelic culture to BBC Radio Scotland's Children's Hour. She also took advantage of the wide variety of amateur musical and theatrical productions that Oban offered, from school-based folk-group, baroque ensemble, debating society, and drama productions, to local bands, Gilbert and Sullivan productions, and public speaking.
In 1962, three months after leaving Oban High School, she won the coveted Women's Gold Medal for singing at the Royal National Mòd—an honour which brought with it a raft of opportunities to perform in concerts, tours, folk-clubs, and festivals on both sides of the Border.
During her early career, Gillies sang at large-scale Gaelic concerts on the official program of the Edinburgh International Festival (Usher Hall, Leith Town Hall) and appeared in the first of many live Hogmanay shows (1964) to an audience of over 20 million people. She took part in a televised folk concert in Glasgow's Kelvin Hall, organized by poet/folklorist Hamish Henderson, where she sang alongside Scots and Irish traditional performers such as Jeannie Robertson and The Chieftains. Following this appearance, Gillies started a musical partnership with Jimmy MacBeath, an itinerant worker and singer of Bothy Ballads from the north east of Scotland. During these early years, Gillies also gave regular radio recitals of a capella Gaelic song on BBC Scotland, and sang on the early BBC Gaelic black-and-white television series Songs all the Way.
In 1965, Gillies graduated MA (Celtic and English) from the University of Edinburgh, and went on to complete a post-graduate year as research student/transcriber in the School of Scottish Studies, at a time when the collection of Scotland's heritage of Gaelic song was at its peak. Then, in 1966, she left Scotland to pursue classical vocal training in Italy and London. She spent the next five years completing her apprenticeship both as a singer, under the tutelage of German Lieder experts Helene Isepp, Ilse Wolf and Paul Hamburger, and also (to "have something to fall back on", as her grandmother always said) as a secondary school teacher of English, History and Music. Having acquired a Postgraduate Certificate in Education from the University of London (PGCE), she went on to teach in a huge, progressive, arts-oriented comprehensive school in Bicester, Oxfordshire, famed for the size and quality of its Music Department: its impressive end-of-term productions involved the whole community and included Wagner's Die Meistersinger and Verdi's Nabucco (with Gillies in the rôle of Abigail).
Television performer Gillies returned to Scotland in 1971, and has been based here ever since, singing in concerts, theatre, studio recordings, and radio and television programmes.
Her media “break” came as resident singer on Mainly Magnus (1971–72) – a 26-week live Saturday night TV chat-show (BBC Scotland) hosted by Magnus Magnusson. Other BBC Scotland TV programmes followed, including the much-loved Gaelic musical series 'S e ur beatha BBC Scotland, on which Gillies sang and introduced traditional performers including Aly Bain, Tom Anderson and Na h-Òganaich.
In 1973, shortly after the birth of her first child, she starred in a one-off eponymous 50-minute "special" programme (BBC2 UK network) with guest star Stéphane Grappelli. Showcasing Gillies' wide musical repertoire and also featuring her talent as a storyteller and illustrator, this show gained her the rather ironic title of "Best TV Newcomer of the Year", as voted for by readers of the Daily Record for TRICS, the Television and Radio Industries Club of Scotland. (Even more ironically she was invited back the following year to present the same award to Billy Connolly.)
Other highlights during this time include:
• Anne Lorne Gillies: another 50-minute “one-off music special” (network/UK: BBC2, for legendary producer Yvonne Littlewood) was followed by a series of six programmes with the same format in which Gillies presented and sang with an array of international guests including the Swingle Singers, The Kings Singers, the Chieftains, Fairport Convention, Scottish Ballet, Juan Martine, Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen.
• There was a Girl: a series created for BBC Scotland by the Laurence Olivier Award-winning English dancer Gillian Lynne (choreographer of Cats, Phantom of the Opera, etc. who was created a Dame in 2014). In each programme Anne told a separate love story through music and dance with the help of a troupe of male Broadway dancers, and each featured a male star of film and stage: George Chakiris (American Academy Award-winning actor/dancer, best known for creating the rôle of Bernardo Nuñez, leader of the Sharks, in the Hollywood smash-hit musical West Side Story), David Hemmings (star of Michaelangelo's Antonioni's English film Blow-up), French actor / dancer Jean-Pierre Cassel (Murder on the Orient Express, Oh! What a Lovely War, Prêt-à-Porter) and Barry Ingham, star of the Royal Shakespeare Company and musicals on Broadway and London's West End (Gypsy, Camelot, Aspects of Love)
• Something to Sing About (BBC2 UK/network) six 50-minute Light Entertainment programmes co-starring legendary Scottish comedian Chic Murray, actors Patrick Malahide and Jan Wilson and Scots baritone Peter Morrison.
• The Castles of Mar (BBC Scotland) location OB series filmed in Royal Deeside from some of the National Trust for Scotland's most iconic castles. Anne sang Scots songs, mainly from the North-East tradition, and introduced some of Scotland's most enduring entertainers, including Andy Stewart, Isla St Clair, Fulton MacKay, Russell Hunter and Iain Cuthbertson
• Many one-off TV shows, including Rhythm on Two (contrasting the styles of Gillies and Barbara Dickson, BBC2 UK); Anna agus Clannad (BBC Scotland) – highlighting stylistic similarities and distinctions between the Scots and Irish Gaelic traditions; The Puffer’s Progress: an hour-long film (BBC1 network/UK) shot on location on board a Clyde ‘puffer’ as she steamed slowly along the Crinan Canal, and showcasing Gillies' own original songs – including her “signature song” “The Hills of Lorne”; My kind of music (BBC1 network/UK) also showcasing Gillies' own songs, including “After the Pantomime”: with special guest star, Alan Price.
• Numerous guest appearances on popular BBC TV series such as Castles in the Air, Songs of Scotland, The Max Boyce Show and Talla a’ Bhaile; on, Independent channels, Thingummyjig, Sir Harry Secombe’s Highway; and of course the live Hogmanay shows (BBC and ITV network/UK) in which Gillies starred regularly, over the years, alongside Scottish stars such as Kenneth MacKellar, Iain Cuthbertson, Alastair MacDonald, Peter Morrison and Annie Ross.
• Children's programmes: Gillies' brief stint as Scottish anchor-person on the Multi-coloured Swap Shop (presented by Noel Edmonds and Keith Chegwyn) was interrupted by the birth of her third child. Thereafter, she was involved in several Gaelic children's series, including Bzzz which featured twelve original Gaelic pop-songs co-written by Anne and pianist David Pringle.
From the late 1980s onwards, Gillies increasingly worked as presenter / interviewer of adult programmes, especially those in, or relating to, the Gaelic language: she fronted three series of About Gaelic (Scottish Television's popular and informative chat-show – an "introduction to Gaelic culture for non-Gaelic speakers") and Barail nam Boireannach – two challenging hour-long Gaelic language versions of Scottish Television's current affairs series 100 Scottish Women. She was also a guest presenter on BBC's Saturday Night at the Mill (where she interviewed, among others, Tippi Hedren, star of Alfred Hitchcock's film The Birds) and, in the 1990s, completed a 5-day stint chairing Channel Four's live daytime current affairs programme Powerhouse.
More recently, with the growth of Gaelic-medium television programming, her appearances have included interviewee in chat-shows such as Còmhradh ri Fionnlagh, and Dòmhnall MacLeòid agus Dòmhnall MacLeòid (STV / Grampian) Thuige seo and Fonn mo bheatha with Cathy Anne MacPhee (BBC Alba) presenter of religious series: Laoidhean agus Sailm and Spiorad Dhè (STV / Grampian) co-presenter, singer/songwriter, in the 1980s children's series 'Bzzzz', co-written by Finlay J MacDonald with Donnie 'Large' MacDonald and cartoonist Ewan Bain (BBC Scotland) Reòiteag air Rothan / The Ice-cream Factory for Channel 5. actor in Leabhar an Àigh – dramatised documentary by Dr Finlay MacLeod, about Edward Dwelly, the man who wrote the definitive Gaelic dictionary (BBC Alba) writer / presenter of Dà chànan aon chridhe / Twa heids ane hert 45-minute TV musical documentary about Robert Burns (MNE for BBC2) with guest musicians including Sheena Wellington, Jim Malcolm, Karen Matheson, Donald Shaw, James Graham, Maggie MacInnes
Champion of Gaelic Throughout her career, Gillies has espoused many causes, charitable, cultural and political: she has raised funds and public awareness for many organisations – medical, social, artistic, political – especially those connected to children and Scottish Gaelic culture. In 1983 she was invited to take on the role of Patron of Comhairle nan Sgoiltean Àraich (the Gaelic Voluntary Playgroup Association) and then became a key player in a no-holds barred nationwide campaign to persuade the authorities to recognise the importance of the Gaelic language both within Scotland and at international level: the urgent need to reverse the decline of Gaelic as a spoken language and to protect and develop its heritage through its development as a medium of communication on radio and television and in mainstream education.
She was the Patron of the Gaelic Playgroup Association from its inception in the early 80s, and established Padraig am Bus Trang, a double-decker Gaelic Playbus Project which brought the advantages of language and play to the most deprived inner-city areas in Glasgow. She became one of the Directors of the Glasgow Highland Association which gives grants to university students of Highland parentage or ancestry, and a Director of Comhairle nan Leabhraichean (The Gaelic Books Trust).