The Distil Showcase is on Friday 10th April 2015 in Stirling Tolbooth, 8pm. The concert will feature 10 new pieces of music written by composers who have taken part in the Distil Residential. The music will be performed by the fabulous Mr McFall’s Chamber. You can buy a ticket here. Read more about the Showcase here.
Emma Tomlinson has written the piece “Talisker Bay”. Here is some information it.
The main aim of this piece was to experiment with the Viola as a solo traditional instrument. Having come from a classical background on the Viola and learning traditional music on the fiddle it amazed me that the Viola was not used more. Consequently I wanted to write a piece that crosses the boundaries of ‘classical’ and ‘folk’ music; giving the Viola the main melodic line and rich harmonies. I picked the key of C minor to base the piece around as it is a very resonant key on the Viola, as G would be for the fiddle. After experimenting with a reel idea I took some of those phrases and slowed them down to create, quite a long, introduction! The beginning of the piece starts pizzicato with an ambiguous beat, this sets the mood for the entire piece of ‘having movement’ and a feeling of ‘unease’. As the pizzicato fades out it is replaced with a lot of overlapping features, of tune and harmony, however the rhythmical elements of the pizzicato can still be felt underneath all the smooth lines. This introduction culminates with a unison passage which accelerates into the reel. Here the solo Viola really takes the lead with only double bass accompaniment. The other instruments accompany the melody and the harmony changes with each repeat of the tune. The piece ends with a slightly slower passage of the main reel melody, the opening phrases and the main harmonic ideas all played at the same time. This creates a rich but chaotic texture will eventually falls into unison to end the piece on C. The title, ‘Talisker Bay’, came to me as I was writing the piece. Talkiser Bay is a bay on the West coast of Skye, near the Talker Distillery. It’s down a windy track and is quite isolated. I visited there whilst I was traveling around the outer Hebrides 2 years ago, before I moved to Scotland. The day I was there the weather was quite wild, wet, windy, grey and the sea was choppy. The beach is a mixture of huge pebbles and a mixture of black/golden sand. There’s also a rapid river that cuts through the beach to get to the sea. In the sea just offshore are huge rocky outcrops, around the edge of the bay are tall dark cliffs with water systems flowing off them. On this particular day all this created quite an ominous atmosphere and it was in my mind as I wrote the piece.
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