A very special concert in Morvern and Sagas and Seascapes tours Orkney.

It seems like ages ago now, but just two weeks ago we performed On A Wing and A Prayer – Morvern with composer Lisa Robertson (also playing violin) and cellist Ruth Rowlands. It turned out to be a very special event, and you will be able to share the atmosphere in our online concert, which will air on YouTube over the weekend of 23rd-25^th August.

On A Wing and A Prayer – Morvern Concert 27th July

On A Wing and A Prayer – Morvern had a very different feel to our Deeside instalment, due in large part to the fact that our research week in May was largely warm and sunny, whereas Deeside was researched in the depths of winter with temperatures down to -8c. Each stunning in their own right, but they were always going to produce very different music!

Probably good, then, that we had similar conditions for the performance in St. Columba’s Chapel, Drimnin. What an absolutely ideal place to play. Reached via a long, unsurfaced track, it’s situated on the very edge of Morvern Peninsula Your eye is drawn to the sea gateway to the Atlantic between Mull and Ardnamurchan and it’s not hard to imagine the Norse seafarers sailing into the sound. The chapel has absolutely perfect acoustics with the light flooding through the clear windows, offering a direct connection with nature as we played: something many of our audience commented on.

The Music

Our programme was very much a journey. We started with Atlantic Drift by the Scottish composer Judith Weir, who celebrates her 70^th birthday this year. We then transitioned into the bleak yet ethereal soundworld of Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdóttir’s Reflections. For us, the sparseness of this piece, with its edgy textures, represented the bleakness of the climate crisis that we face.

After this, we sensed the rainforest coming to life in a soundscape created in conjunction with members of the Morvern community in a workshop that Lisa and I led in Morvern Community Woodland in May. Following our quite literally eye-opening exploration of the rainforest with local ecologist, Alasdair Firth, we chose to focus in on the minute detail of the lichens, using their shapes as the basis of a guided improvisation, which ultimately zoomed out to the teeming life of the whole rainforest. A habitat that has constantly under threat from both climate change and human activity, it’s good to see it being nurtured and even extending in Morvern.

Following our improvisations on the rainforest, it was an honour to include “Oakwood, End of May” by Scottish Wildlife Trust’s ranger for the Rahoy estate, Steve Hardy. Steve is a passionate advocate for the habitat around him and explained to us the pressures it is under. His piece provided time to pause for reflection and consider the precious habitat around us that we must protect and treat more gently by thinking of our global affect on ecosystems and what that means for humankind’s own survival.

‘ar lùths – our power – a new commission for Lisa Robertson

Throughout my time in Morvern, I have indeed been deeply impressed by the local community’s attempts to be good stewards of the land and so I was delighted that we ended our programme with a new commission written for us by Lisa, ‘ar lùths – our power. Lisa’s piece in many ways summarises the course of our whole concert, from the natural assets,  mainly water(!), as it courses from the mountains, through the woodlands, rich in plant and birdlife, into the flowing rivers before we reflect again on humankind’s damage to our world, finally celebrating the ability of the community to pull together and work as one, depicted through the metaphor of harnessing water as hydro power. Lisa’s piece ends with a wonderfully exhilarating (and very clever!)  imitation of the screw turbine in Ardtornish Estate’s hydro system combined with fragments of “Don Chuthaig” (To the Cuckoo) by Morvern bard Dr. John Maclachlan , the 150^th Anniversary of whose death we mark this year.

Online Concert

To share in our performance, which is accompanied by video centred around our experiences in Morvern in May as well as poetry onscreen from Kathleen Jamie’s “The Green Room”, sign up via Eventbrite and listen 23^rd-25^th August. There is a suggested donation of £5 to cover licensing and production costs.

We would like to extend our thanks to Creative Scotland and the Hinrichsen Foundation for supporting the On A Wing and A Prayer project as well as Clutag Press and writer Kathleen Jamie for allowing us to use poems from ”The Green Room”, which you can purchase here: https://www.clutagpress.com/product/no-5-green-room-kathleen-jamie/

Sagas and Seascapes on tour at Orkney International Science Festival

Nordic Viola are extremely excited to be joining with our colleagues Aldubáran from the Faroe Islands to tour our ever-popular Sagas and Seascapes production. Sagas was a Made In Scotland show in the 2022 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, but it was originally an OISF online commission in 2021, so it’s very special for us to finally take it live to Orkney.

I’m very excited about our first performance, which takes place on the northern periphery of Orkney at the North Ronaldsay Bird Observatory on 8^th September. It’s a 3 hour journey from the island capital, Kirkwall, to get there. Our other performance is in St Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall on 10^th September. I can’t imagine how special it’s going to be to perform the programme in there. There is so much Norse history tied up in this building and it is, of course, the resting place of St. Magnus, who we celebrate in Gemma McGregor’s Carry His Relics as well as a piece inspired by the ruins of St. Magnus Cathedral at Kirkjubøer in the Faroes, múrurin by Eli Tausen á Lava. Finally, our wonderful artist, Orla Stevens , will be running a workshop at Pier Art Centre, Stromness on 11^th September on painting to sound. Pop over to our sister website, sagasandseascapes.com, where we’ll be running a series of new blogs in addition to all the wonderful content we already have on our the project there. Also, visit oisf.org to book tickets for our concerts, Orla’s workshop and much, much more.