We just had a great Distil Showcase in Stirling on Friday 9th May. It is amazing to see how the compositions have developed since our first showcase 8 years ago. I’m not sure what is happening but the string writing (for McFall’s Chamber) gets better every year and musical ideas get more interesting as well. Are the composers feeling more confident to express theirselves? Are they seeing more trad music composers trying their hand at extended composition and it simply feels more normal to do it?
Friday’s composers were a mixture of ages and included a few BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician Award participants. Tina Jordan Rees wrote Albert for her late grandfather, Gillian Fleetwood returned for a second year running with the sequel to her 2013 composition Craft. This one was called Craft 2. Lori Watson wrote a beautiful graphic score depicting a journey and was performed brilliantly by fiddler Adam Sutherland. 2012 Finalist Catriona Price wrote a piece called Ness and it featured the accordion.
I hope that all these musicians are feeling more confident to write more music. Distil has for years tried to encourage Scots trad musicians to try other styles and to date have commissioned over 80 new pieces of work. If you would like to learn more about Distil visit our website http://www.distil.org.uk. Listen to the Showcase compositions below.
If you would like to enter the BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician Award follow this link.