Taking the viola northwards!

If I had to distil it to one moment, then it would be sitting on the rocks looking at the ice floes at 10pm in that beautiful low light. Not a sound to be heard – at least not a human sound. No voices, no cars. Yet the more you listened, the more you heard: running water, creaking ice, the occasional bird, a fight breaking out in the dog park. How would I convey those sounds in music?
But Greenland isn’t one big paradise. People struggle with rapid social change and globalisation and life is not easy that far north. How could I give something back to a country that offered me so much?
And so a project was born that would take me another 6 months to crystallize.

The final pieces of the jigsaw fell into place courtesy of BBC R3’s Northern Lights series. I discovered how each of my host countries have developed their own distinctive voice through the music of, amongst others, Jon Leifs and Haflidi Hallgrimmsson (Iceland), Kristian Blak (Faroes), the amazing Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq and the traditional drum music of Greenland.
I have discovered a surprising amount of contemporary viola music from the North Atlantic area through the Association of Faroese Composers, Iceland Music Information Centre and the Scottish Music Centre. I hope to work in new ways with sound artists in Iceland and with composers in Greenland – more on that in a future post! There are also several interesting educational and coaching opportunities.

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