The Distil Showcase will return again to the Tolbooth in Stirling on Friday 8th April 2016 at 8pm. The concert showcases the new and exciting music of traditional music composers. We are very lucky to have Mr McFall’s Chamber as our resident house band once again. You can buy tickets for this fab night of music here!
Catriona Price has written music called Seeking The Ice, Questing For The Sun. Here’s some information about it.
Seeking The Ice, Questing For The Sun is a line taken from a poem called “Swans” by the Orcadian writer George Mackay Brown. The poem features in a collaborative book “Orkney – Pictures And Poems” between George Mackay Brown and the Swedish photographer Gunnie Moberg. The book has been in my parents house for as long as I can remember, and when I left home, I took it with me to look through whenever I got a pang for Orkney. Over the years, I’ve read more and more George Mackay Brown and have become totally enraptured with his writing. I feel like I’m being transported home to Orkney when I read anything by him, his beautiful imagery and familiar tone evoking fond memories of my upbringing in the islands. This feeling is accentuated by Moberg’s amazing photography which features in this collection.
I have long since been plotting a way in which to use this book in a musical composition. I started thinking – two art forms have already combined here – what will happen if we add a third?
Seeking The Ice, Questing For The Sun is for fiddle and string trio. I wanted to use this opportunity to experience something unfamiliar – what it feels like to play music I have written in a quartet setting, within the context of two things very familiar to me – traditional fiddle playing, and playing in string quartets.
The piece closes with an extract from George Mackay Brown’s “Swans”. The poem describes how whilst most birds come and go with the seasons, the Swans are the steadfast ones, staying with us all year long.
“Out on the loch, white blown blossoms!
All summer long,
A troop of princesses.
They smash the glass of the loch,
Gently, gently.
They seek the reeds under an ancient stone.
The blue and the gold will never end.
Summer will never end.
But the fields about the loch
Change, slowly, from green to gold.
You are the steadfast ones.
Other birds fly north and south
Seeking the ice, questing for the sun.
But winter finds you. See,
It hovers about you, first snowflake,
Out of the dark cloud
A trillion hexagons, purest crystal.
And the hill, when the cloud is broken
Whiter than the proud birds.
Their blue and silver palace a prison,
They walk on the ice of exile, those princesses.”
You can read about all the composers here.