One of Canada’s up-and-coming singer/songwriters is heading to Jasper from her home province of P.E.I. and bringing a few friends along.

Catherine MacLellan, who was recently one of the artists chosen for CBC Radio 2’s Canadian Song Quest and 2009 recipient of the Solo Artist of the Year at the Canadian Folk Music Awards will be playing at the Brushfire Gallery on May 2 with The Olympic Symphonium.

It will be MacLellan’s first time to showcase her latest album in northern Alberta, “Water in the Ground” released in March 2009.

For her fans, they will get to hear new material, as she has been working on new songs that will be on her next album.

The musician, whose album Church Bell Blues hit #1 on the iTunes Canada Roots charts, has had a busy year so far.

In February she was asked by Gordon Lightfoot to perform onstage at the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame debut concert series, which was headlined by Lightfoot himself and Gord Downie of The Tragically Hip.

A dream come true for MacLellan, as both men she calls her heroes, it was also a terrifying experience.

“Gord Downie and Gordon Lightfoot sat around and talked about songwriting and played some of their own songs. Then I came out and played some of my songs,” she says. “They had me play one of Gordon Lightfoot’s songs, and I played it while he was actually onstage watching me, it was pretty terrifying.”

But, she says, it was also an amazing experience, and both Lightfoot and Downie were very nice and amazing to share the stage with.

Last month MacLellan played three shows at the South by Southwest music and film conference in Austin, Texas before heading back to Toronto for a tour of Ontario.

And let’s not forget her song Singing Sands, which she was chosen to write in late 2009 for the CBC Canadian Song Quest.

“I didn’t really expect to win it at all, so my mind wasn’t really on it. Then I found out I had like a week to write the song and record it. It was very quick, it was very fun, I like challenges like that,” she says of the task. The Song Quest consisted of Canadians voting on their favourite musicians from every province and territory, and then voting on a location in each province and territory for that musician to write about.

With only about a week to write the song after finding out she was the chosen musician from P.E.I., she says she had planned to go down to Singing Sands, but in the end wrote the song before she had a chance to visit (although she has been to the area before). She went down to her basement with her guitar and had the song written in about ten minutes.

MacLellan will be onstage in Jasper with The Olympic Symphonium, a three-piece folk band out of New Brunswick, which is one of MacLellan’s two bands. Tickets for Catherine MacLellan’s show at the Brushfire Gallery on Sunday, May 2 are $15 in advance or $20 at the door and can be purchased by contacting 780-852-1994 or info@jasperartistsguild.com