Nordic Music Days Glasgow: Scottish Ensemble 'Qullaq'
The City Halls and Old Fruitmarket
Scottish Ensemble: Jonathan Morton (director, violin) ; Tristan Gurney (violin) ; Jane Atkins (viola) ; Alison Lawrence (cello) ; Diane Clark (double bass)
with
Aidan O’Rourke (fiddle) , Nive Nielsen (voice) , Hans-Henrik Suersaq Poulsen (voice/drum) , Mikè Fencer Thomsen (voice/guitar) , Maiken Mathisen Schau & Hanna Kinnunen (flute) , Amy Turner (oboe) , Nina Ashton (bassoon).
Qullaq: directional and dramaturgical consultation from Valerio Peroni, Alice Occhiali and Francesca Tesoniero at Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium.
Scottish Ensemble are a pioneering collective of musicians who champion music for strings, collaborate with creative minds and blur the boundaries between genres and artforms. For this performance they are joined by musicians from Norway, Finland, and Greenland, as well as one of Scotland’s most well-known musicians, Aidan O’Rourke.
Qullaq is a groundbreaking collaboration between musicians from Scotland and Greenland. Ancient and contemporary Greenlandic drum dances typically involve a lot of descending vocal and physical gestures. Qullaq means ‘ascending’: this work is a confrontational but jubilant exploration of a long-persecuted culture which is now in the ascendence. Drawing on myths, social dynamics and post-colonial politics, the piece brings together contemporary Inuit performance practices from Kalaallit nunaat (Greenland) with Aidan O’Rourke’s unique take on Scottish traditional music and the strings of the Scottish Ensemble.
Jukka Tiensuu’s Innuo opens the programme, taking a baroque orchestra as a starting point and ending up somewhere completely new in a masterclass of orchestration. Seyoung Oh’s The platform vividly echoes is inspired by the story of one of Glasgow’s ‘lost’ stations - the Botanic Gardens Railway Station, weaving archive sound through the music.Works by Anna Thordvaldsdóttir and David Fennessy complete the programme, with both exploring spacious landscapes and flowing sound worlds.
As part of Nordic Music Days, Glasgow. Supported by: The Danish Composers Society, Nordic Theatre Laboratory, the Danish Arts Foundation and the Augustinus Foundation.
Programme
Jukka Tiensuu (Finland) - Innuo 9’
Seyoung Oh (Scotland) - The platform vividly echoes 9’ first performance
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Anna Thorvaldsdottir (Iceland) - Reflections 10’
David Fennessy (Scotland/Ireland) - An Open Field (Come Closer, Come Closer) 6’
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Aidan O’Rourke (Scotland) - Nive Nielsen, Hans-Henrik Suersaq Poulsen, and Mikè Fencer Thomsen (Greenland): Qullaq 25’ first performance
Tickets
Tickets (£20/£6). More information and booking here.