The Scotsman Sessions #198: Rosie Nimmo

Welcome to the award-winning Scotsman Sessions. With performing arts activity curtailed for the foreseeable future, we are commissioning a series of short video performances from artists all around the country and releasing them on scotsman.com, with introductions from our critics. Here, Edinburgh’s Rosie Nimmo performs her song Music Is Sunshine, inspired by a walk on Portobello beach

Edinburgh singer-songwriter Rosie Nimmo’s mellow number Music Is Sunshine was inspired by a remark an acquaintance made while they were both exercising their dogs on Portobello beach. “He said, ‘To me, music is like sunshine’,” recalls Nimmo, “and I do think it is essential for a lot of people.”

In fact, Music Is Sunshine was going to be the title track of her latest album, released last month, but at the last minute she changed her mind and used the last line of the song to title it Where Time Suspends – which, she agrees, also rather sums up our situation over the past, Covid-stalled year.

Nimmo, who also sings blues and jazz covers with her Rosy Blue line-up and in duet with guitarist Stuart Allardyce, has been writing and performing her own songs for the past decade or so. She finished recording the present album, her fourth, in September but had been working on it for the previous four and a half years. On it, accompanists include husband Tommy on bass, guitarist Graham Smith, Mairi Campbell on viola and multi-instrumentalist and producer Marc Pilley.

The album has been enthusiastically received, featured in this paper’s sister publication, Scotland on Sunday, championed by Iain Anderson and others on radio and warmly endorsed by none other than music-loving crime-writer Ian Rankin.

As well as a singer, Nimmo is also an accomplished visual artist although her painting and printmaking have been taking something of a back seat. Some of her artworks can be seen in the background of her Scotsman Sessions video.

She believes that Where Time Suspends “covers so many different aspects of being human and I hope the music speaks to people. All I’m trying to do is communicate and give people something that’s not just about me but integral to all of us.”

For more on Rosie Nimmo’s new album Where Time Suspends, visit www.rosienimmo.com

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