Karine Polwart: Come Away In, Edinburgh review: 'a warm gesture of winter hospitality'

Karine Polwart and the Come Away In choir at St Giles’ Cathedral, Edinburgh | Lisa Ferguson / The Scotsman

Karine Polwart: Come Away In, St Giles’ Cathedral, Edinburgh ★★★★

Despite the challenging weather that had decimated so much of Edinburgh's Hogmanay programme on New Year’s Eve, demand for 1 January’s First Footin' music events, taking place in venues all around the city, remained high and nowhere more so than for the programme's unofficial centrepiece, featuring Karine Polwart at St Giles Cathedral.

More than 150 local singers had answered the call from the folk singer-songwriter to assemble a choir for Come Away In, her warm, lyrical gesture of winter hospitality.

As I left the first performance at 2pm, idly wondering if I might return for a better vantage spot at one of the three subsequent 30-minute concerts, the long queue snaking up the Royal Mile and round the corner suggested that I would be out of luck. No matter, because it had been a heart-warming expression of gathering and song, an uplifting blend of spoken word and musicianship that filled the Kirk to the rafters with communal feeling and open-hearted cheer.

Inspired by and adapted from Robert Burns' poem The Wren's Nest, the title track is a spiritual invitation for refugees and the marginalised to come in from the cold, and it took flight with a joyous commitment from the choir, who displayed great tenderness of tone.

Karine Polwart and the Come Away In choir at St Giles Cathedral | Lisa Ferguson / The Come Away In choir

An emotive rendition of the slow, venerable Shetland air Da Day Dawn, meanwhile, didn't stint on the darkness of the season but similarly found the ensemble in fine, enthusiastic fettle, their message of positivity guided by Polwart's delicate yet powerful lead vocal, swelling to a lush but also light and airy conclusion.

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