Northern Irish pianist Ruth McGinley’s deep-rooted connections to her native musical heritage have never been more eloquently explored nor expressed than in Aura, a collection of “Irish airs reimagined” in arrangements by Neil Martin.

It has been a long six-year wait for the follow-up to McGinley’s recommendable Reconnection, where the Derry-born pianist’s musical scope extended from Rachmaninov to Arvo Pärt, Gershwin to Philip Glass with pleasing asides courtesy of Hollywood, Tin Pan Alley and Randy Newman. The time in between has been well spent, McGinley, a former BBC Young Musician of the Year piano winner, adroitly distancing herself from the ‘child prodigy’ label that became a debilitating millstone and prompted a too-long retreat from music making. 

Aura reveals an artist in more confident, surer maturity – what she describes as “a more authentic place” – equipped with an expressive signature marked by an obviously felt sense of connection with both musical material and the piano. In the vastly experienced composer, arranger and instrumentalist Neil Martin, whose hinterland incudes classical and Irish traditional music, she...