Honoured and grateful that Ailie Robertson has been awarded funding from PRS Foundation Open Fund to compose Skeins for our John Rae and the Northern Telegraph Route project.
Ailie Robertson
Ailie Robertson is a multi-award winning composer, and harpist from Scotland. She has been commissioned by some of the world’s most prestigious cultural institutions including the BBC Proms, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Scottish Ensemble, Red Note, Bang on a Can, The RSNO, Cappella Nova, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, The Scottish Chamber Choir and the Riot Ensemble. She was composer-in-residence with Sound Festival 2019-2022 and composer-in residence with Glyndebourne Opera from 2020-2022. She was awarded the ‘Achievement in New Music’ prize at the inaugural Scottish Awards for New Music and has also won prizes for ‘Best Chamber work’ and ‘Innovation in New Music’.
Ailie writes:
Skeins takes its starting point from John Rae’s expedition to establish a telegraph route linking Scotland, the Faroe Islands, Iceland and Greenland. I found myself drawn less to the expedition itself than to the stories that sit just outside it.
Histories of Arctic exploration tend to celebrate the explorer, but I became increasingly interested in the invisible labour, care and endurance that made these journeys possible, yet rarely became part of their telling.
Rae had been married only a few months when he left on this expedition. I shifted my attention towards quieter networks of connection: relationships, memory, waiting and the work of sustaining lives across long periods of absence.
That led me to the knitting traditions of Scotland Faroes Iceland and Greenland. These traditions became another way of thinking about communication and connection: systems for carrying knowledge, identity and memory across generations and across the North Atlantic.
Premiere in Orkney and Shetland
Skeins will be premiered by Nordic Viola and Aldubáran at Orkney International Science Festival in St. Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall on 9th September alongside new commissions by Stuart MacRae, Eli Tausen á Lava and Arnannguaq Gerstrøm and poetry by Lesley Harrison.
John Rae and the Northern Telegraph Route will then travel to Shetland, playing at The Boat Hall, Shetland Museum on 12th September at 6:30pm.
Tickets will be available very soon, so make sure to subscribe to be amongst the first to grab a ticket! Ticket links will also be at https://nordicviola.com/forthcoming-performances/ from August.
In August, I’ll also be introducing you to our other new commissions and you will be able to get to know our creators in a series of podcasts.
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