RED NOTE SPRING SCHEDULE 2015

Red Note Ensemble - red as in radical, note as in music (perhaps like the brown note, a frequency that engages the body in a particular manner - a call to arms, a revolutionary new music)... 

Sorry, where was I?

It's time to keep an eye on John Harris and his gang.
12 February 7.15pm
Lachez Tout (Enough Already)
François Sarhan
Co-production with LOD Music Theatre, with

introduction by Wannes Gyselinck, Concertgebouw, Bruges, Belgium
François Sarhan, composer in residence at the National Theatre in Orleans between 2009 and 2012 is simultaneously a cellist, composer, author, encyclopaedist, and a creator of stop motion animation and film. Lachez Tout is a concert and silent film with live music, actors and two Foley (film sound-effect) artists, with François Sarhan himself performing on stage. Circassian actor Claudio Stellato plays Bobok, the central character of the film, and the Foley Artists create the sounds of the doors slamming, the footsteps and the passing trucks. Lachez Tout is a total experience halfway between a detective story and a philosophical tragicomedy.

Red Note Ensemble Performers
Violin Jackie Shave
Saxophone Gareth Brady
Guitar Malcolm MacFarlane
Percussion Tom Hunter
Synthesizer Simon Smith
Foley Artists Julien Baissat and Celine Bernard

6 - 10 March 7.30pm
Reels to Ragas Two
Mission House Harris, Ceilidh Place Ullapool, Universal Hall Findhorn, Victoria Hall Glenbuchat and Big Shed Tombreck

Scottish-Indian fusion as Red Note Ensemble

is joined by the superb tabla player Kuljit Bhamra and piper-and-multi-instrumentalist Fraser Fifield for new and traditional tunes. Expect love songs, dance music, a hint of Bollywood and plenty of tunes you’ll recognise immediately even in their new guise.

Join internationally-renowned tabla player Kuljit Bhamra each day for a family-friendly hands-on Indian drumming workshop, introducing some of the rhythms and musical ideas that drive Reels to Ragas.

Red Note Ensemble Performers
Tabla Kuljit Bhamra
Cello Robert Irvine
Violin Jackie Shave
Pipes Fraser Fifield



8 - 12 April
13 Vices by Brian Irvine and Jennifer Walshe
Collaboration with Ensemble Doubt
The MAC Belfast, Great Hall, Magee Campus Derry, Droichead Arts Centre Drogheda, National Concert Hall Dublin, King’s Place London

Inspired in part by Mihail Chemiakin’s 'Children are the victims of adult vices’ (a series of grotesque sculptures located in a park in Bolotnaya Square, Balchug, 800 metres south of the Moscow Kremlin) this unique work is the result of a collaboration between two of Ireland’s most dynamic compositional voices - Brian Irvine and Jennifer Walshe. 13 Vices melts down the boundaries between disciplines and dominates the space that lies somewhere between theatre, contemporary classical, free improvisation, opera, conduction, poetry, thrash and trash!

Red Note Ensemble Performers
Violin Jackie Shave
Viola Max Baillie
Cello Robert Irvine



5 May 7.30pm
Plug Festival opening concert: Simply Red Note
Ledger Recital Room, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Glasgow
Plug is back! The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland’s festival of new music is a celebration of potential. As Associate Contemporary Ensemble, we work alongside student composers and guest artists and soloists. Plug starts with intent, and we get our hands on the first new scores at Scotland’s festival. #Plug2015

Nicholas Olsen New Work
Thomas Brown New Work
Donagh Marne New Work
Jay Richards New Work

Robert Allan New Work

Red Note Ensemble Performers
Flute Ruth Morley
Clarinet Yann Ghiro
Percussion Tom Hunter
Violin Nicolas Miribel
Cello Robert Irvine
Piano Simon Smith

8 May 7.30pm
Plug Festival closing concert with MusicLab
Stevenson Hall, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Glasgow

Plug culminates with a combining of forces, as we are joined by the students from MusicLab to close the festival with a bang. The programme features a large-scale composition from doctoral student Colin Broom, as well as last year’s winner of the prestigious Craig Armstrong Prize, Jay Capperauld.



Colin Broom 7 Pictures of an Electronic Life
Jay Capperauld New Work
Jamie Wilson New Work


Red Note Ensemble Performers
Flute Ruth Morley
Sax Gareth Brady
Percussion Tom Hunter
Piano Simon Smith
Cello Robert Irvine



13 May 7.30pm
Leverhulme Fellows Concert
Ledger Room, Stevenson Hall, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Glasgow

The culmination of masterclasses with Garry Walker held earlier in the year, this concert joins Red Note and the Leverhulme Conducting Fellows. Two pieces from Kagel's Windrose series and two new student compositions using the same salon orchestra set the scene for this concert to head in almost any direction!

Red Note Ensemble Performers
Flute Ruth Morley
Violin Nicolas Miribel
Viola Jessica Beeston
Cello Robert Irvine
Bass Rick Standley
Percussion Tom Hunter
Piano Simon Smith
Harmonium Julia Lynch


19 – 20 May 7.30pm
Watching Over You with Karen Cargill
St Andrew's in the Square, Glasgow and Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh


The premiere of a new song cycle by Scottish composer Rory Boyle, setting a specially-written set of poems by Dilys Rose, for Scottish Mezzo Soprano Karen Cargill and the Red Note Ensemble. The seven songs tell, in honest first-person detail, of the joys and trials of early motherhood. The programme also includes Janacek's deep and personal string quartet, Intimate Letters.

Red Note Ensemble conducted by Jean-Claude Picard



24 May afternoon concert
Sounding Brass
Bath International Music Festival, Cleveland Pools, Hampton Row, Bath.

An open air concert in the atmospheric setting of Cleveland Pools, the only remaining Georgian Lido in the UK, set by the River Avon close to the centre of the world heritage city of Bath.

Red Note Ensemble Performers to include:
Trumpet Mark O'Keeffe
Percussion Tom Hunter

Liquid Composition (Red Note @ Summerhall)

Classical composition is a funny old game. While there are no easy scores at this level, Red Note's Elbow Room attempts to show that the ensemble can give it 110% on a muggy night in Edinburgh. A concert of two halves, with composer in residence Thomas Butler working his socks off for two compositions, Elbow Room is a great advert for the medium.

Thanks, Gary. Now we have our panel of experts putting in a few hours before the World Cup begins. Alan, what did you make of the first piece, My Life in Ventriloquism?

Not the strongest of starts, Ron: a bit like watching one of those Brazilian flair players doing keepy-uppies for eleven minutes. Just one man (Yann Ghiro) and his clarinet: for a big lad, he's good with his fingers. But, at the end of the day, Butler's score never looked like putting one in the onion bag. But I think Gary might disagree...

Ghiro's got a cultured set of lips and this is deliberately composed to show him off at his best - or any other clarinet player. Butler out a good shift in, testing the range of the instrument. The clarinet has all the possession and I'd say Butler's score has a good engine.

Not so much squeaky bum time as squeaky instrument time. 

Well, thank you Ron, and I am glad you managed not to say anything racist there. But moving onto the Elbow Room, Butler's new work...

second piece,

He really sets out his stall early doors for this: if Philip Glass had composed it, we'd be raving about it for days. It's right out of the top drawer, a mash-up of intriguing visuals and a steady, consistent style.

On paper, it's a more interesting piece, but you don't play classical music on paper. Now, it tells the story of Glasgow's redevelopment through archive film and a steady, minimalist pulse...

I think we need to take it one movement at a time. It's a potential banana skin, that minimalist comparison. It reminded me more of Kraftwerk or the German 'motorik' bands, like Neu, filtered through a classical ensemble.

Robert Irvine's cello was crucial: he's a top top player.But all we want from composers is consistency, and it ended up being a real concert of two halves.

You've already said that one. There or thereabouts. It is schoolboy illustration of the video, really, giving a romantic, if you will, reflection on these dodgy propaganda numbers from Glasgow Corporations past. This composition needs a goal, a bit of focus. I felt the ensemble parked the bus early and turned in a solid performance.

The real winner tonight was the clarinet, Ron.

But Will a Scotsman Never frae this Vile Growth be Freed

BLOG POST BY GARETH K VILE.

Originally PUBLISHED 02 JUNE 2010 in the skinny

William Sweeney first orchestrated A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle in 1992, during one of Tramway's golden ages when the West Coast became a powerhouse for original performance. I am currently sitting in the Red Note Ensemble's last rehearsals for their recreation of this important work, that matches Hugh MacDiarmid's scornful Scots epic with Sweeney's post-modern orchestration. If MacDiarmid's state of the nation address is firmly rooted in the first stirrings of Scottish modern cultural identity, its lurching analysis of presbyterian ills, the abusive relationship with England and the spiritual aspirations of a language firmly rooted in the physical world retains a vibrant political and emotional resonance.

MacDiarmid is a Scottish heir to the great modernist experimentations of Joyce and Beckett, and his manipulation of Scots takes it beyond the usual "cult of Burns" sentimentality- a cult the poem explicitly rejects- and uses it to diamond cut the tensions between the sexual and the sacred, horror and redemption, vulgarity and philosophy. 

Sweeney's orchestration- typically dense and layered, opting for viola over violin and heavy bass clarinets- captures the drunken sway of the poem. By turns referencing the greats of twentieth century classical music- Debussy, Stravinsky, even atonal magician Schoenberg- and swinging into intoxicated parodies of Scottish folk, carnival tunes, Mingus jazz and even hip-hop, the score is energetic, rushing along the spoken word passages and deftly illustrating the shifts of mood, tome and inspiration.

MacDiarmid's poetry does pose difficulties of understanding: the dialect is increasingly archaic and, combined with poetry's natural compression, intellectually challenging. The score, whether lumbering drukenly through the mists of providing ominous intensity, offers a way into this meditation on national identity. Red Note's decision to revive the work- currently touring Scotland- at a time when nationalism has been reduced to a trite tribalism, is a brave statement of faith in a culturally defined sense of nationhood.

Inevitably,a pessimism fills much of the poem: the narrator is drunk, frustrated, horny and comic. The attacks on Calvinism's ability to tie up the human spirit, the mythical allusions and the connections to a European philosophical tradition may be dated, but remain a fascinating analysis of Scottish defeatism. Yet even as he castigates the spirit that had hobbled Caledonia, MacDiarmid is forging a Scottish epic poetry that can stand along the works of Homer, Dante, Joyce and Virgil: a baton picked up by Alastair Grey's Lanark. More recently, this particular score recalls a time when Tramway was recognised as an international venue, with Glasgow exuberant following 1990's cultural celebrations.

"Like love frae lust and God frae men," MacDiarmid urges optimism in the depths of despair, a natural alchemy that finds the grace in critical anger and drunken rage: the fierceness of his intelligence shining like lightning from shook foil in between the intoxicated rolling and the bitter thoughts.

Red Note Intoxicated (again)

Steaming Scots staring at symbolic thistles, Bollywood beats banged out on bongos, singing shits serenading scared chefs: Red Note rudely reject the respectable confines of contemporary classical compositions and seem intent on proving that if it has a score, they can play it. There's no surprise that they are touring Sally Beamish's settings of four Persian love songs in collaboration with Michael Popper's choreography.

Although their name hints at a political determination - and their version of Hugh MacDiarmid's A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle presages the proliferation of performances provoking pondering on national identity - Red Note are joyously eclectic. As happy translating Eno's ambient recordings into orchestral wanderings as they are jolting shards of synthesisers through Glass' 1000 Airplanes on the Roof, Red Note are helping classical music escape from both academic formalism and the confines of the concert hall. In the past three years, they have become key players in the fusion of actors and orchestra, while reaching out to unexpected musicians, like Bollywood's Kuljit Bhamra.

When it arrives in Edinburgh, for the last night of the Traverse's autumn dance festival, The Intoxicating Rose Garden highlights how Red Note are picking up on some of the themes within contemporary choreography. Michael Popper, dancer and singer, was last in Edinburgh as part of Dance Base's Fringe programme: fascinated by the merging of different forms of art, he has a reputation for choreography thoughtful pieces that are interested in ideas and poetry. While his style is his own, his integration of sophisticated, intelligent concepts mirrors similar intentions in the creations of Andy Howitt (Deliberance dances justice) or Janis Claxton, who uses her academic research on primates as a foundation for her studies of power and hierarchy.

Red Note's presence on stage follows the trend for theatrical performances featuring live music (from Iona Kewney's actions with Joe Quimby through to The Hebrides Ensemble staging 8 Songs for a Mad King) where the musicians are more than an afterthought or mere accompaniment. Fitting into the larger fashion for cross-platform work - it is no accident that to of the past year's most well received plays were supported by Vital Sparks, a funding stream dedicated to original collaborations.

And although no Red Note show can be seen as typical - or even representative, making it very hard to pin them down as a particular sort of ensemble - The Intoxicating Garden at least continues several of Red Note's abiding enthusiasms: a Scottish composer (Sally Beamish), a high concept collaboration and a fascination with the connection between western and eastern cultures - not to forget the theme of inebriation, whether on the drink with MacDiarmid or on through love with Hafez.

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh 7:30pm 22 November

Traverse Dance

The Traverse might be better known as a major Fringe venue and Edinburgh's home for new writing, but Dominic Hill, during his time as artistic director, opened up the theatre to an annual festival of dance. New artistic director Orla O'Loughlin continues this tradition: for its fourth year, Traverse Dance Festival blends visual theatre, contemporary music, film and animation to demonstrate how choreography knows no limits - and how some unexpected companies are enjoying dance's potential.

12 Dancers / Deliberance is the product of TV's Andy Howitt's ambition to choreography twelve of Scotland's top male dancers. Premiered in Aberdeen, it stars Iain Spink (sometime choreographer for Scottish Ballet), Norman Douglas (star of his own company), Matthew Hawkins (Michael Clark's "hip priest") and pretty much every male dancer who wasn't in David Hughes Dance's Chinaski Sessions. 

SMITHdancetheatre brought Agnes & Walter: a little love story to the 2011 Fringe: inspired by James Thurber's The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, it insists that Mitty's fantasy life isn't mere time-wasting but a dynamic creativity.

Greg Sinclair pops down from Stirling's macrobert with a Sonata For A Man and A Boy. Featuring hot cello action, it focuses on how even a simple music lesson can become an epiphany for both teacher and pupil.

Another Fringe success - this time from 2012 - is Smallpetitklein's Within This Dust. A triple bill of works inspired by Richard Drew's photographs of 9/11, Tommy Small's choreography is a bracing reminder of art's ability to disguise the truth and lend a poetry to darkness.


The Mighty Red Note Ensemble - not content with bangin' Bollywood and Glassing science fiction, go back to to the 14th century for a spot of Persian mysticism. The Intoxicating Rose Garden illustrates the poetry of Divan e Hafez through music, song, dance and animation. 

Leaping back up to date, Jonzi D is throwing a party of contemporary hip-hop. Artists promised on this bill include Big Tajj, Jackin' The Box and Freshmess.

TRAVERSE DANCE FESTIVAL 2012 - Listings information



SMITHdancetheatre
Agnes & Walter: a little love story

20 November / 7.30pm



A delightful flight of fancy that set the 2011 Edinburgh Festival Fringe alight with its poignant and compelling comic story-telling. Inspired by James Thurber’s classic story, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.

------------------------------------------------------

Citymoves Dance Agency & Aberdeen Performing Arts
12 Dancers /Deliberance

21 November / 7.30pm



Guilty or not guilty? Set in a jury room over one night, 12 strangers come together. Slowly and sometimes explosively begin to express their opinions.

------------------------------------------------------

Red Note Ensemble
The Intoxicating Rose Garden

By Divan e Hafez translated by Jila Peacock

22 November / 7.30pm



A new hybrid piece of music, song, dance and animated image inspired by poems by Hafez, the 14th century Persian mystic.

------------------------------------------------------
Greg Sinclair and macrobert
Sonata For A Man and A Boy

Created by Greg Sinclair, Michael Sherin and Karen Tennent

23 November / 7pm & 24 November / 2.30pm



An everyday cello lesson becomes a journey into the unexpected for a boy who’s nearly twelve and a thirtysomething man.

------------------------------------------------------

Smallpetitklein Dance Company
Within This Dust

Choreographed by Thomas Small

23 November / 7.30pm



A stunning blend of beautiful movement and subtle storytelling. 3 live works with dance, film and animation explore the events surrounding 9/11.

------------------------------------------------------

Breakin' Convention
Open Art Surgery - Experiments in Hip Hop Theatre

Hosted by Jonzi D

24 November / 7.30pm



Delve into the mind and souls of some of Scotland’s finest hip hop artists as they dare to try something new, dangerous and exciting! 

Red Note Bow to the Might of Vile

I am not trying to say that I am hugely important in the world of contemporary classical music. However, only yesterday, I was bemoaning the absence of a Glasgow date on Red Note's latest tour. I was especially upset because it features a collaboration with tabla maestro Kuljit Bhamra. 


Just to be clear, Bhamra isn't just some drummer. He worked on the scores for Bend it Like Beckham and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He was the first British Indian to compose for a west end musical (The Far Pavilions). Okay, he did help Andrew Lloyd Webber on some percussion arrangements, but I can forgive that, because he pretty much kicked off UK Bhangra back in the 1980s.  

Yet it seems my blog of anger was read in Red Note's Edinburgh HQ. A new date has been added to the tour. 

Red Note are to be congratulated for this additional date. First of all, they have  remembered how powerful I am, and accordingly shown respect. I suppose some people might be pleased that this sort of musical fusion is getting to reach another audience, and adding to the Cottiers' programme of classical music (which is just gearing up for the West End Festival). 

Flattery aside, I am excited by From Reels to Ragas  - not so much the reels as the range. Composer Giles Swayne's cello solo is influenced by African music, there's Judith Weir's string trio that plays tribute to a man who was executed for carrying an offensive weapon (some bagpipes), Chinese folk and a world premier from Bhamra, Lost Temples. Since I grew up in the 1980s, I like some pan-cultural musical mash-ups, and now I am getting old, I don't need it to be amplified. In fact, it is perfect: it's a really cool programme, but there will be seating for my old bones. 

Red Note Ensemble + Kuljit Bhamra 

Cottiers Theatre, Glasgow 

Monday 18th June 2012 6:30pm    

Programme:

‘The Bagpipers String Trio’ by Judith Weir.

'Lost Temples' world premier by Kuljit Bhamra

'Billy Bhangra & His Bolly Bongos!' by Kuljit Bhamra

‘Canto’ for solo cello by Giles Swayne.

‘The Stream Flows’ for solo violin by Bright Sheng

‘Machair to Myrrh’ by Jackie Shave

‘Bucolics’ for viola & cello by Witold Lutoslawski

Programme Notes:

‘The Bagpiper’s String Trio’ – Judith Weir

These three pieces form a very short instrumental opera, based on the life of James Reid, a bagpiper in Prince Charlie's Jacobite army, who was captured by the English in 1746 and executed after a judge had classified the bagpipes as a weapon. This piece is a string trio version of Sketches from a Bagpiper's Album (1984) for clarinet and piano, scored for Violin, Cello, and Viola.

‘Canto’ for solo cello – Giles Swayne

Canto for solo cello (1981) is a full-on response to Swayne’s experience of African musics. Minimalist in some ways, quite complex in others, it projects positive tone and enquiring spirit which represent this composer at his considerable best.



‘The Stream Flows’ - Bright Sheng

The first part of "The Stream Flows" is based on a famous Chinese folk song from the southern part of China. The freshness and the richness of the tune deeply touched Bright Sheng when he first heard it. Since then he has used it as basic material in several of his works and he hopes that the resemblance of the timbre and the tone quality of a female folk singer is evoked by the solo violin. The second part is a fast country dance based on a three-note motive.

‘Machair to Myrrh’ - Jacqueline Shave

Written on the Isle of Harris in May 2011 for tabla, guitar and violin ‘Machair to Myrrh’ describes a journey on a magic carpet from the wild and beautiful Machair on the West Coast of Harris, across the Atlantic to the West Coast of Africa; Morocco's ancient walled medina of Essaouira. A central improvised section for guitar over violin rhapsodic broken chords forms the central journey and then the tabla signals the arrival in Morocco. We then proceed into a wild improvised frenzied dance. You will hear insistent rhythmic patterns interspersed with witch doctoresque crazy stuff inspired by Gnaoua music around the fires in Essaouira. There is no guitar with us on this tour so the piece has been arranged to include Cello in its place.

‘Bucolics’ – Witold Lutoslawaski

This is an attractive and melodic piece, in five movements and lasting just over five minutes. Folk music is indeed in evidence here: the melodies are based on some of those collected by Father Wladyslaw Skierkowski in the Kurpie region of Poland. The direction of Lutoslawski's future musical development is evident in the chromatic use of successive minor thirds and minor seconds. In the faster sections, Lutoslawski also uses superimposed passages in distinctly different meters.

Glass in your Face

An entire weekend of Philip Glass is a daunting prospect. It might be his 75^th anniversary, but Glass’ minimalism has a habit of repeating itself. Interludes from Bang on a Can notwithstanding, the decision to book The Smith Quartet for all five string quartets, The Scottish Ensemble for his American Seasons and the mighty Red Note for 1000 Airplanes on the Roof looked like overkill.

Fortunately, there is more diversity than a casual glance would reveal. The quartets are a revelation: Glass has an ear for a melody – something that in rare within minimalism, which tends to either prize the dynamic or experimental – and The Smith Quartet emphasis the emotional range across and within the quartets. Indeed, aside from a dull Two Pages, an early piece performed on the Sunday by BOAC which lacks the nuance of the more mature forays into repetition, Glass is revealed as a master of forms, using his distinctive trill as a motif throughout out his compositions rather than the expected trick.

One highlight is Red Note: Davis McKay's reading of the text is appropriately intense, while the orchestra, bolstered by some very 1980s’ sounding synthesizers, weave a murderous, space age magic around the story of a man who has either had a mystical revelation or gone insane. McKay might be on the verge of hysteria, but the key question – is his vision of an interconnected university madness or magic – is thrillingly left ambiguous. The video screens illustrate his adventures into inner and outer space and the soprano takes off into musical areas that recall Star Trek, utterly appropriately.

Bang On A Can, New York champions of new music, display their affinity with Glass at Tramway on Saturday: a selection of shorter work for a small ensemble reminds of Glass’ affinity with delicate textures. Their sessions of contemporary composition reveal, amongst African influenced pieces and clarinet heavy work-outs, that Thurston Moore is a composer capable of working free jazz and Velvet Underground influenced rock into something more satisfying than his increasingly predictable sessions within Sonic Youth.

The only disappointment is Eno’s Music for Airports: a good selection against 1000 Airplanes, it has been orchestrated by BOAC. Although the ensemble is tight – Red Note are pulled in, alongside the Scottish Youth Choir – Eno’s ambient albums were consciously created in the sterile atmosphere of the studio: a non-musician, his limitations are exposed in the concert hall. The vigour of live instruments meshes uncomfortably into Airport’s delicate shifts, leaving something neither chilled nor exciting. Since a similar problem occurred in the recent orchestration of his Apollo album, the difficulties seem to lie in the process itself: Eno may have shared musical interests, but he is far from a classical composer.

But Glass triumphs: BOAC have the right mix of classical technique and rock’n’roll irreverence: Red Note are always, as Nicholas Bone from Magnetic North affirmed when picking them to perform Pass the Spoon, the go-to ensemble for the cutting edge. And the finale on Saturday, Glass’ American response to The Four Seasons, was an emotional tour de force. The Scottish Ensemble kicked off that concert with a performance of Vivaldi’s ring-tone favourite that banished bad memories of Nigel Kennedy and suggested that it is part of the tradition that eventually flourished in the high romantic era.