There is something profoundly unfashionable, in this clattering age, about sitting in a darkened theatre to mourn a tree. And yet that, in essence, is what Karine Polwart has been asking Scottish audiences to do — and, by all accounts, they have been doing it gladly, and through tears.

Windblown, the singer-songwriter's luminous new folk-theatre piece, is a "parting glass" — her phrase — to a 200-year-old Sabal palm carried from Bermuda to Scotland in the early 1800s and tended, across nine generations, by the gardeners who loved it. The tree is now facing what Polwart's producers Raw Material bluntly call "its chainsaw demise". Before it goes, she has given it a song.

A canopy of fronds, a pianist, and a voice

Beneath a sculpted canopy of palm fronds, accompanied live by the pianist Dave Milligan, Polwart gives voice to the palm itself, tracing its extraordinary life and final days. The themes are weighty — colonial legacy, ecological care, grief, resilience — but the touch is feather-light.

The critical reception has been the sort of thing one rarely sees outside the more enthusiastic dispatches from Glyndebourne. The Guardian called it "sublime". The Herald pronounced it "a work of monumental beauty". The Scotsman settled for "pure magic ... an exquisite 60-minute song cycle". The Stage, The Skinny and the Financial Times all bestowed five stars. After a triumphant run at last summer's Edinburgh Festival Fringe — part of the Made in Scotland Showcase — the show has spent April and May touring the country.

A near miss for Glasgow — but Perth beckons

Glasgow audiences had two nights of it at the Pavilion Theatre on 8 and 9 May, and the response was the now-customary standing ovation followed by quiet, slightly stunned conversation in the foyer. Stirling's MacRobert Arts Centre had its turn on Wednesday.

For those who missed the Pavilion run, however, all is not lost. The tour's final Scottish date falls on Saturday 16 May at 7.30pm at the Gannochy Trust Auditorium, Perth Concert Hall, Mill Street. Tickets, at £32 to £38, are available through Perth Theatre and Concert Hall's box office and via Polwart's own website at karinepolwart.com.

It is a modest journey from Glasgow Queen Street, and on the evidence of the reviews, an evening one is unlikely to forget in a hurry.

The quiet acts of love

Polwart, who hails from Banknock in Stirlingshire, has spent two decades building a reputation as one of Scotland's most thoughtful musical voices — an artist as comfortable on the Celtic Connections stage as on Radio 4. Windblown, written, directed, composed and performed by Polwart with sound design by her long-standing collaborator Pippa Murphy and AV by Jamie Wardrop, is of a piece with that body of work: rooted in place, attentive to the small things, and unafraid of feeling.

"An unforgettable meditation on our connection to the natural world," is how Raw Material describes it, "and the quiet, enduring acts of love that sustain it." On the evidence to hand, that is no overstatement.

A tree is coming down. Before it goes, somebody is singing for it. One could do considerably worse, this Saturday, than make the trip to Perth to listen.

Karine Polwart: Windblown — Gannochy Trust Auditorium, Perth Concert Hall, Saturday 16 May, 7.30pm. Tickets £32–£38 via horsecross.co.uk and karinepolwart.com.