There’s something miraculous about a living, breathing folk tradition. You wonder how it can possibly survive in a world where so many settled communities are disintegrating, and the endless wave of Anglo-American pop is carried by the internet to every last corner of the world.

The Scots Gaelic folk tradition seems especially miraculous because, as well as surviving the modern world, it has had to contend with the baleful effects of the Highland Clearances of the 18th and 19th centuries, which led so many Gaelic speakers to emigrate. Yet, despite that, it survived and is now thriving, thanks to a new generation of Scottish musicians.

Julie Fowlis, a 43-year-old singer, composer and band leader, is one of them. A multiple winner at the Radio 2 Folk Awards, her voice is familiar to millions from the theme song to Brave, the Golden Globe-winning 2012 Disney animation, and millions more who watched her perform at the opening ceremony of the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.

But her real fan base is in folk clubs around the world, and increasingly in mainstream concert halls – including New York’s Carnegie Hall and London’s Kings Place, where she begins a four-concert residency next week as part of the year-long “Voices Unwrapped” season.

It’s an astonishing outcome for someone who never had any intention of becoming a performer. “I always loved the tradition, but I could never see myself performing. In many ways, I’m quite a shy person,” she tells me from her home in the Scottish Highlands, where she lives with her husband, the musician Éamon Doorley, and their two daughters. “I did a music performance degree with the intention of working with Gaelic folksong in the community. I actually did that, and performing was something I did on the side with friends. Then my mother became very ill and I had to give that up to be at home with her. So doing the odd gig and even a few festivals was a very handy way of scraping a living while my mother recovered. One thing very quickly led to another, and suddenly I found I was into a career.”