Chloe Matharu
Chloe Matharu is a Scottish Indian singer songwriter, harpist and harmonium player. She is a multi-award winning, internationally touring, musician and draws on her experience of sailing the world as a Navigational Officer in the Merchant Navy to lend a voice to the modern day seafarer through music. Bringing back to life the folk tradition of narrating working conditions and traditions, she uses her lived experiences, storytelling, and music to reel audiences into her watery world. Live, Chloe performs original songs in English and arrangements of Scots traditional songs. She interlinks modern and historic maritime themes through song. Matharu accompanies her singing with either the clarsach- one of Scotland’s oldest instruments – or her Punjabi grandfather’s Harmonium- an instrument adopted into Indian traditional music and used by her grandfather during Sikh worship in the Gurdwara. Her performances are deeply personal and unique.
Since 2022 she has performed at impressive venues such as Celtic Connections, Cambridge Folk Festival, Glad Cafe Glasgow, Green Note in London, Fringe by the Sea, Edinburgh Fringe and Hartlepool Folk Festival. She is the only artist to have won, by public vote, Celtic Music Radio’s Album of the Year. She gained this award for her debut album, Small Voyages, released in October 2022; and for her second album, Sailors and Rolling Stones, in October 2024.
She was selected by Showcase Scotland for the WOMEX awarded Global Music Match 2022. In 2023 she was awarded a Danny at Celtic Connections; a Live Music Award at the Greenock Telegraph Community Awards and nominated by public vote in the Wales Folk Awards. She has been selected twice as a finalist in the Canadian Goderich Emerging Artist Showcase: in 2023 and 2025. She has performed live on BBC Radio Four Woman’s Hour, BBC Radio Four Loose Ends, BBC Scotland News TV program The Seven, interviewed on BBC Radio Scotland’s The Afternoon Show. She has been featured in the Times, the Sun and as part of BBC Scotland’s Island Crossings TV show.
Chloe joined Live Music Now Scotland in 2025.
“A beautiful dynamic movement that carries the listener along.” – Folk Radio UK
“Absolutely Incredible” – BBC Woman’s Hour
“Superwoman enigma… incredibly talented” – BBC The Afternoon Show