Québécoise harpist Valérie Milot is among the most prolific harpists on the planet. With some thirty recordings to her name, more than four million YouTube views, and a Prix d’Europe under her belt, she commands an impressive and devoted following. Her latest release, Nebulæ, affirms not only that popularity but also her artistic mission: to create an accessible, meditative space. That impulse traces back to her earliest musical experiences, when she first felt music’s power to transform.

Milot says in her introduction to the album liner notes that Nebulæ exists as a dual project: as a performance tour with scientific and philosophical themes, and as an album that encourages listeners to reflect on their role in the universe. “I wanted to create a meditative space where each interpretation, each musical sequence, guides the listener toward deep reflection on our place in cosmic immensity,” Milot says. “Who are we in this vastness? Where does our trajectory as conscious beings suspended between the stars lead us? Music, this language that transcends all barriers, … brings us together in this quest for meaning.”

The disc opens with Denis Gougeon’s dreamy waltz Au cœur de l’étoile (In the Heart of the Star), where Milot immediately establishes a mood that is at once reflective and timeless. Her delicate tremolos feel perfectly timed. From there, she moves seamlessly into Carlos Salzedo’s arrangement of a sonata by Giovanni Battista Pescetti, its searching minor key rendered with grace and winsome restraint. This contemplative terrain is where Milot excels: she embodies the composer’s voice with ease and generosity, inviting us fully into the music’s quiet magic.”

How many harpists have played Debussy’s “Clair de lune” from Suite bergamasque? Probably all of them. Yet Milot approaches this rarefied moment as though discovering it anew. Salzedo’s Jeux d’eau follows, a reminder of the great harpist-composer’s devotion to the French school of his birth. Though modernism is well underway, the piece looks backward even as it places the harp front and center as a virtuosic force, and Milot clearly revel

There is always something fascinating about hearing harpists tackle music originally conceived for wind instruments, conjuring a seamless legato line where none should technically exist. Milot accomplishes this with aplomb in Gluck’s Dance of the Blessed Spirits, and just as persuasively in Liszt’s transcription of Schubert’s Du bist die Ruh (Thou Art Repose), where her singing line is marked by exceptional smoothness and elegance.

One of the disc’s highlights is Lux (Light) by Canadian composer Amélie Fortin. Recitative-like and luxuriating in silence, the piece allows us to almost see the shifting light as sound gradually emerges. Trills shimmer, a pointillistic melody surfaces from somewhere distant and unfamiliar, yet the prevailing sensation is one of peace and acceptance. It feels distinctly otherworldly, very much in keeping with the album’s title.

Gabriel Dupont’s Clair d’étoiles was a discovery for me. A student of Massenet and Widor and a contemporary of Ravel, Dupont’s life was cut tragically short by tuberculosis in his mid-twenties. This small gem captures a fleeting moment of hope and longing for better days. Milot follows it with Déodat de Sévérac’s Valse romantique, delivered with poise and style, and closes the album with an arrangement of William Bolcom’s jazzy Graceful Ghost Rag, emphasizing its loose, lilting energy.

Altogether, Nebulæ is a superbly curated and deeply inviting recording, one that confirms Valérie Milot’s rare ability to balance virtuosity with introspection.