Scotland Sings is all about getting everyone singing – any style, anywhere. In schools, choirs, workshops, round kitchen tables, in pubs and clubs, in the hills and on the street! Singing is a great way of having fun, de-stressing, looking after your health, making friends and building strong communities – so join in and spread the fun. Over the next few years we have some great workshop events going on as well as our ongoing training, development and support programmes for song leaders and choir directors.
Renewing the Tradition
Renewing the Tradition is our exciting new project for 2015 – 2018. The idea is to build a brand new choir repertoire of fresh contemporary arrangements that are seeded by some of Scotland’s best-loved Burns and Gaelic songs. It’ll be available here as an on-line resource.
In Ayrshire, Argyll and Bute, Highlands, Perth and Kinross and the Scottish Borders we’ll be running two big singing workshops each year for the next 4 years. These days are open to choirs and individual singers alike and will be led by some of Scotland’s best workshop leaders. We’re also hoping to host some outstanding international workshop leaders too.
The first workshop each year will fall on the weekend of or after Burns night and is coupled into our innovative new commissioning programme and Gaelic song-writing competition.
Each year we’ll invite 2 great songwriters to choose a Burns song and rewrite it into a modern version that will be taught at the January workshop. This year Kim Edgar and Findlay Napier are writing the songs that will then be arranged for harmony singing. Kim’s song is called I Will Not Say Goodbye and her starting point was “a mix of the sentiments of John Andreson and Ae Fond Kiss”. We’re really looking forward to unveiling all the songs on the 24th January!
Gaelic Song-writing Competition
We’ve also launched our new Gaelic Song-writing Competition and will also be bringing the winning song- arranged for harmony singing – to the workshops on 24th Jan. The winning song will be a modern re-write of an old Gaelic song. Submissions for this are being take up until 31st October 2015. Details of the competition are here.
If you would like more information on our workshops and how you can get involved please join our mailing list (and get our FREE Community Singing Book!)
