Anne Lorne Gillies () 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.
Gillies' musical upbringing was quite wide-ranging. 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") was 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).
Her signature self-penned song is Hills of Lorne. Lorne is a district in the Argyll and Bute council area and Oban is its capital.
Television performer
Gillies returned to Scotland in 1971, and has been based there ever since, singing in concerts, theater, studio recordings, and radio and television recordings.
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.