Stephen Pelton Dance Theatre with Gavin Bryars Ensemble

More From the Beard at Cottier's

Daniel's Beard - one of the groups behind the Cottier's Chamber Project - has suggested a solution to my terror at trying to catch everything in the festival: I take time off work. Unfortunately, since my job involves going to see stuff, taking the fortnight off work would mean tidying my house and not going to concerts or theatres. So I'll list a few more events for people who have a life, and might like to augment it.

It is inevitable that the referendum vote is making its presence felt, even at a music festival. And so, there will be an In Conversation session, where several prominent arts journalists will be discussing the directions that Scotland's cultural world might take following the referendum vote in September.

I might try to attend this, since I probably better work on having some kind of opinion. But I am more excited about Daniel's Beard getting down with the Currie and Quirk Shostakovich Series - a cycle of all 15 of Shostakovich's string quartets (other quartets are available in this sequence, including the Maxwell Quartet, Fejes Quartet, Edinburgh Quartet and Glasgow String Quartet).

And there's a showing of the film about old people doing music, A Late Quartet, (with Philip Seymour Hoffman and Christopher Walken), at The Grosvenor cinema. And there is some dance action programmed...

In the meantime, here's The Beard in action...

The Cottier Chamber Project

I tend to find the West End Festival (June) hard work: it is not so much curated as a series of different strands, making it very difficult to navigate. Fortunately, some of those strands are dynamic and coherent - which brings us to The Cottier Chamber Project.

Having said that, 43 events in 14 days makes it difficult to keep up...

The big thing with festivals is having a theme (I hear T in the Park is going with Deconstructing Liveness, while David Greig has got his own festival). The CCP is going for Identity, which is one of those nice post-modern ideas that is very open and fashionable. It can be all about personal identity (plus points for religious or racial) or social identity. The lunchtime series of JS Bach numbers (free, too) might shape up to create a picture of the Big Man's musical identity.

The identity of chamber music gets a nice twist - there's even music that I understand this time: tango, with Mr McFall's Chamber, Shostakovich's string quartets (my apprenticeship in ballet made his sound very familiar), some jazz (Martin Kershaw) and a bit of storytelling from Jenna and Bethany Reid, klezmer from Moishe's Bagel and folk from the  Alastair Savage Trio.

6 - 29 June 2014

Tickets will be on sale online from  or by telephone on 0333 666 3366 (9-7 Mon-Fri, 9-5 Sat) from 5th March 2014. In-person sales will take place at our box office in Hillhead Library, which will be open 9am-5pm Mon-Sat for the months of May and June.

Cottier’s Theatre: 93-95 Hyndland Street, Glasgow. G11 5PU
Hunterian Art Gallery: University of Glasgow, 82 Hillhead Street, Glasgow. G12 8QQ
St Silas Church: 69 Park Road, Glasgow. G4 9JE