A multimedia performance celebrating the land and people of Coigach and Assynt will be one of the centrepieces of this year’s Blas Festival.
Talamh Beò – Living Land, commissioned by Coigach & Assynt Living Landscape Partnership Scheme, is a multimedia work featuring responses to the place in music and language, especially Gaelic, reflecting long-rooted families, new arrivals, invested visitors and workers, and how they feel about the place.
Talamh Beò, which will be featured during Blas Festival which runs in venues across the Highlands and Islands from 2 – 10 September, features the composers Mary Ann Kennedy, Finlay Wells, Nick Turner and Donald MacLean, with guests including James Graham, Patsy Reid, James Mackintosh and Seonaid Aitken, and will take place on the following dates:
· 7th September, 7.30pm, Rockfield Centre, Oban
· 8th September, 7.30pm, Glengarry Community Hall, Invergarry
· 9th September, 7.30pm, Coigach Community Hall, Achiltibuie
Mary Ann Kennedy said: “Coigach and Assynt is a land and a people in constant motion. The voices and experience of its people, sung out through their music and stories, paint a great canvas of human experience against a backdrop of rocks as old as the earth itself and a landscape which tells its own dramatic tales of the cycle of life. We spent lockdown creating this new music in isolation in our studios and cut off from Coigach and Assynt itself. It’s truly wonderful to be able to make this music a live experience and to take it back to its source of inspiration, thanks to Blas Festival this year.”
The Talamh Beò album, released on the Watercolour Music label, is being launched at Blas Festival on the night of the Achiltubuie performance, bringing the whole project home to its place of inspiration.
The Blas Festival showcases Gaelic culture and the thriving Scottish traditional music scene over 9 days of events in venues across the Highlands and Islands and this year will host 40 concerts and cèilidhs, an extensive education and communities programme and an online offering which will include workshops and livestreamed concerts. Musicians performing this year include Paul McKenna, Kim Carnie, Hecla, Staran, Martainn Skene, Norrie MacIver, Megan Henderson, James Duncan Mackenzie, Ronan Martin, Rachel Walker, Julie Fowlis, Sian and many more.
The 18th Blas, which means ‘taste’ or ‘sample’ in Gaelic and is organised by Fèisean nan Gaidheal in partnership with The Highland Council, will be jam-packed with special performances. As always big birthdays will be marked during Blas and this year two respected tradition bearers turn 80; Gaelic singer, Mary Smith and storyteller, Essie Stewart. There will also be showcase of brand new Gaelic songs by Skye-based songwriter and musician, Calum Munro. ‘Tomhas‘ is a collection of Gaelic songs exploring love, loss and mental health and will be performed by Norrie MacIver (Skipinnish) and Kim Carnie (Mànran, Staran) with an excellent band under the musical direction of Brian McAlpine.
Other highlights of this year’s Blas include a collaboration between fèisean cèilidh trails and Wales’ National Youth Folk Ensemble, AVANC; this year’s commission, The Summer Walkers, by Chloë Bryce; Sing Me A Story, a Scotland’s Year of Stories commission and celebration of the storytelling tradition in the Highlands and Islands and the music that goes with it, featuring Allan Henderson, Margaret Stewart, Ewen Henderson, Sileas Sinclair and Ewan Robertson; The Badenoch Suite by Capercaillie’s Charlie McKerron; and two special concerts showcasing music from two brand new music collections, TheCoigach and Assynt Collection and The Eliza Ross Manuscript.
The full programme of events can be found at www.blas.scot along with details of how to purchase tickets.
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