Tag: research

Symposium: Beyond the Tune, 1st Nov

Lori Watson

Programme

Beyond the Tune: Traditional musicians creating new music

A knowledge-exchange symposium supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council

St Cecilia’s Concert Hall, Edinburgh.

10:00                      doors open, registration (refreshments provided)

10.30                     Panel 1

Chair: Dr Pàdruig Morrison

Welcome and the New Traditional School project

Dr Lori Watson, University of Edinburgh

Building the NTS Archive

Ceri Lumley-Sim, University of Edinburgh

The Blackbird Calls, The Concertina Answers

Short film improvisation from Simon Thoumire, Distil and NTS collection composer

Collections at the Scottish Music Centre

Dr Alasdair Pettinger, Scottish Music Centre

“The moment of composing is like a sea of freedom”: Improcomposing as a folk musician’s creative practice

Pauliina Syrjälä, Sibelius Academy, Uniarts Helsinki

12:15                     Lunch (provided in the Laigh Hall, V GF DF options)

13:15                      Panel 2

Chair: Dr Stuart Eydmann

Distil: Expanding Creative Horizons

Short film from David Francis, Distil and Traditional Music Forum

“A Sense of a Tradition”

Short film presented by Dr Lori Watson and Ruth Barrie, filmmaker

My Favourite Song: Beginning a tune, the very first energy and ideas

Artist Professor Timo Alakotila, Sibelius Academy, Uniarts Helsinki

Sounding, Improvising and Performing Beyond the Tunes

Dr Úna Monaghan, Queen’s University Belfast

15:00                     Discussion in the Laigh Hall (refreshments provided)

Coffee break plus a discussion in response to presenter provocations.

NB There will be soundchecks in the Concert Hall during this session.

  • What do traditional musicians have to offer through extended and experimental composition?
  • What and why are traditional musicians communicating through extended or experimental forms?
  • What aspects need to remain for new work to be thought of as traditional music?
  • How creative is traditional music practice?
  • What needs to exist for new work in this area to be considered experimental?
  • What does improvisation mean in traditional music?
  • What needs to happen for us to view performance in this area as improvisatory?

16:00                     Panel 3, performances with discussion

Chair: Dr Úna Monaghan

Improvisation

NTS Ensemble

Canongate

Aidan O’Rourke

Gleann Liadh, for string trio and piano

Adam Sutherland

Above and Below, for piano and fiddle

Jennifer Austin

It begins and ends with the breath, for four traditional musicians

Lori Watson

Breathing in Quoyloo, arranged for string quartet (orig. string quintet)

Corrina Hewat

Performers:

Mairi Campbell (fiddle/voice/MD)

Sally Simpson (fiddle)

Emma Tomlinson (viola)

Rufus Huggan (cello)

Jennifer Austin (keyboards)

Kirsty Law (voice)

Ross Blair (projections)

Joe Seal (sound)

Thanks to Ruth Barrie for filming the event.

18:00                     End

2023 New Traditional School national composers survey launches

padruigmorrison

All ‘beyond-tune’ traditional music composers living in Scotland* are invited to contribute to the new 2023 survey at https://edinburgh.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/2023nts.

The survey takes approximately 25-40 minutes and will be live for a month, closing 20th January 2024 at 23:59.

Please complete the survey in one sitting. You will have the opportunity to download your response at the end. This survey builds on the NTS survey conducted in 2021.

Our current working definition of ‘beyond tune’ is a musical composition:

  • Created by a traditional musician living in Scotland* [for the purposes of this research]
  • Composed for music performance or listening (e.g. not scores for radio, tv, film or theatre)
  • Composed for any instrumentation (or voice) but often with a traditional/folk element
  • Approximately 8 minutes or longer OR, if shorter in length, innovates significantly from the conventions of traditional music (this could include free improvisation or technology-enhanced music).
  • NOT a conventional set of tunes or traditional/folk song

E.g. A large portion of Celtic Connections New Voices or Distil Showcase commissions are considered ‘beyond tune’.

Composers are also invited to register their beyond-tune compositions to the New Traditional School database for potential inclusion in the forthcoming New Traditional School collection/archive. Register your compositions here: https://tradmus.com/addcomposition/ (or using the tab above).

*Who lived in Scotland when they composed the composition or who contributed to one of the commissioning strands in Scotland e.g. Celtic Connections New Voices, Distil Showcase or a festival commission performed in Scotland.

Research Assistant: Pàdruig Morrison

padruigmorrison

Pàdruig Morrison has joined as Research Assistant, and will be liaising with composers, cataloguing scores, and working on a composer survey.

Pàdruig Morrison is an accordionist and composer from North Uist in the Outer Hebrides.

It was at the University of Edinburgh that Pàdruig studied music and Scottish Ethnology before going on to postgraduate studies at Maynooth University (Ireland) where he completed a PhD in Composition earlier this year entitled ‘Finding a Contemporary Voice for Gaelic Art Music in Scotland’. His doctoral research looked at the synthesis of traditional music and contemporary ‘classical’ composition, considering the crossover present in Scottish works over the past half-century, and submitting a creative output of a 2-hour long portfolio consisting of 11 original works which explore a unified synthesis of traditional music and contemporary composition, drawing deeply on Pàdruig’s knowledge of traditional music and the Gaelic tradition.

In 2020, Pàdruig was a finalist in the BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year, and also received a New Voices commission at Celtic Connections. In 2019 Pàdruig was the winner of the Peter Rosser Composition Competition and has since then had works performed by the Rednote Ensemble, Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble, and the Hebrides Ensemble. He is also a band member of Beinn Lee, performing at Scottish and European festivals, as well as performing often as a soloist.

He began composing traditional tunes as a teenager, and his interest in innovating within traditional composition led to his doctoral compositional research. It also makes him deeply interested in the compositional innovation that constitutes the New Traditional School. Pàdruig is delighted to help the project as a Research Assistant working with Dr Lori Watson, the Department of Celtic and Scottish Studies, and the Scottish Music Centre to develop the next stage of this exciting project.  

https://www.ed.ac.uk/profile/padruigmorrison

https://padruigmorrison.weebly.com/

New Traditional School in Scotland Phase 1

Lori Watson

Funding secured following 2021-22 pilot study

Jennifer Austin, still from film by Ruth Barrie

Following the successful pilot study in 2021-2022 supported by the Royal Society of Edinburgh and Creative Informatics at the University of Edinburgh, funding for a phase 1 study was secured in the form of an 18-month fellowship with the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

The fellowship runs from July 2023 to December 2024 and will combine artistic and ethnomusicological research exploring creativity, tradition and improvisation. I aim to produce a specialist music collection with project partner Scottish Music Centre (Glasgow), the basis of a new archive at the School of Scottish Studies Archives, University of Edinburgh, several new compositions, and research texts.

I will be advertising for a part-time Research Assistant to join me on this project for 6 months in 2023-24 and an Archivist to join the project in 2024. Information on these posts will be circulated soon. If you are a composer whose work relates to this project, please register your compositions here. If you would like to contact me or join the project mailing list, please use the contact page.