“From a Garden of Songs” is a CD project of my friend Tom Clelland I was closely involved in. Scottish songwriters set thirteen of their favourite poems from Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Child’s Garden of Verses” to music.

“From A Garden of Songs” produced by Tom Clelland, in which Scottish songwriters set thirteen of their favourite poems from Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Child’s Garden of Verses” to music.

With songs and music by Robin Laing, Tom Clelland, Davie Scott, Christine Kydd, Duncan McCrone, Ursula Laing, Billy Stewart, John Malcolm, Wendy Weatherby, Heather Young, Pete Clark, Norman Chalmers , Mair Sethi, Rebecca Keay and Kris Koren.

The CD also includes Wendy Weatherby’s arrangement of Robert Louis Stevenson’s own composition “Aberlady Links” and is accompanied by a 28-page colour booklet of the poems with wonderful artwork by Peter Nardini.

The cover painting of Stevenson is a study for the famous painting by Count Pieri Nerli. The rest of the artwork is by Peter Nardini, collected from his paintings over the past five years.

A new RLS website was launched on 13 November at the National Library of Scotland. They played the Wendy’s arrangement of Aberlady Links over the presentation at the launch.

The CD isn’t really aimed at children, although we do have a wee girl singing the first track – it’s more for grown-ups looking back. The idea is that you read the poem, listen to what the songwriter and musicians have done with it, look at the paintings, think back and enjoy (preferably by a warm fire with a good malt whisky or a glass of wine). The idea is that the music, the artwork and words should work together.