Siobhan Wilson's French connection

I have a lot of ground to cover with Siobhan Wilson – from her childhood in the highlands to her new album, but firstly, given that our chat takes place the day after fire devastated Notre Dame Cathedral, of the five years she spent in Paris.

“I used to sit in the gardens for lunch,” she recalls of the time she worked in a souvenir shop to make ends meet – “selling Notre Dame keyrings.” Tourist tat? “Not ALL tat,” she laughs, “we had some sparkly cool T shirts, some pretty arty postcards. In Edinburgh you’d have postcards and a kilt.”

The singer has put that period to good use – with several French-language songs on each of the three albums she’s released to date. A far cry from her childhood in Elgin, where she developed her love of music. “I played bass in punk bands – I was a total weirdo, I didn’t fit the normal type for a teen girl in Bishopmill”

But it was classical music which perhaps influenced her most. She speaks fondly of a teacher, John Mustard, who recently resigned over the cuts to education in Moray. “He made it very accessible to children from different backgrounds.”

That led to a scholarship in Edinburgh, and then to France, though eventually she made the return to Scotland, and the capital, where she is now, along with promoting her new long-player, studying part-time for a masters in composition for screen. “It’s more or less film music,” she explains. But quite far-removed from ‘The Departure’, which is – comparatively – a pop album? “I’ve always been composing, that’s just what I do in my spare time,” she explains. “I don’t necessarily do it for money but as I’m classically trained I always need to be composing.

“I like the feeling of being kept busy and doing arts and culture requires an insane amount of time and care, and though it’s not always paid, you get as much as you put in to an extent.”