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No fewer than eight concerts in this year's programme feature brand-new or recently extended compositions by contemporary Scottish artists, all bar one initiated by Celtic Connections. Wednesday's opening extravaganza, as is now the custom, brings together the Celtic and classical spheres, this year in not one but two large- scale premieres. Duan Albanach (The Scottish Poem), by harpist and Ossian founder William Jackson, combines traditional instrumentalists and Gaelic vocals with a string ensemble; while the song-cycle Osprey, by singer and multi-instrumentalist Brian McNeill, incorporates fiddle, harp, pipes and chamber orchestra.
The defiance, or confrontation, underlying McNeill's words points to the fact that - until relatively recently - traditional music in Scotland tended to be seen as the poor relation in any encounter with the classical world. Orchestras might perform arrangements of popular folk tunes for occasions like St Andrew's Night - but on the implicit understanding that this was populist, light-hearted fare. Composers such as James MacMillan might incorporate traditional melodies into their work, but such elements would be moulded to a classical template. Even Phil Cunningham's mammoth Highlands And Islands Suite - premiered at the opening of Celtic Connections 1997, and widely regarded as a folk milestone - contained plenty of uneasy musical tensions, and was generally treated in distinctly patronising terms by classical music critics.
Opening Concert (Duan Albanach/Osprey), GRCH Main Auditorium, January 16; New Voices Revisited: Fraser Fifield, Tron Theatre, January 19; New Voices: [Alyth McCormack], GRCH Strathclyde Suite, January 20; Photons In Vapour, Tron Theatre, January 26; New Voices: [Finlay MacDonald], GRCH Strathclyde Suite, January 27; The Curve Of The Earth, Glasgow Cathedral, February 1; New Voices Revisited: Wendy Weatherby, Tron Theatre, February 2; New Voices: [Mary MacMaster], GRCH Strathclyde Suite, February
ACTIVE participation, not passive consumption. It's a defining feature of traditional music, a grassroots ethos that's enshrined in the informality of the session and the ceilidh. For its part, Celtic Connections has always promoted this joining-in principle - there are artist-led masterclasses and come-and-try workshops. But in recent years the festival has "joined in" on a wider and more ambitious level, through a growing commitment to commissioning music. Rather than simply creaming off and capitalising on the fruits of the ongoing folk revival, Celtic Connections has invested both money and muscle into feeding it.
No fewer than eight concerts in this year's programme feature brand-new or recently extended compositions by contemporary Scottish artists, all bar one initiated by Celtic Connections. Wednesday's opening extravaganza, as is now the custom, brings together the Celtic and classical spheres, this year in not one but two large- scale premieres. Duan Albanach (The Scottish Poem), by harpist and Ossian founder William Jackson, combines traditional instrumentalists and Gaelic vocals with a string ensemble; while the song-cycle Osprey, by singer and multi-instrumentalist Brian McNeill, incorporates fiddle, harp, pipes and chamber orchestra.
Another regular fixture, begun in 1998, is the New Voices series, in which three musicians each year are commissioned to write a concert-length piece for an ensemble of their choosing. Each is then invited back to "revisit" the work 12 months later, having had the chance to develop it further. This year's bill includes a new concerto, The Curve Of The Earth, written for virtuoso Scots fiddler Alasdair Fraser by Strathclyde University's Head of Applied Music, Mark Sheridan; and the young singer-harpist Corrina Hewat's Photons In Vapour, originally commissioned by the Highland Festival, featuring a six-piece folk/jazz ensemble and the Mull Ladies' Choir.
Individually and collectively, these projects are pushing back - or trampling - the conventional confines of folk or Celtic music. Equally, they are confidently asserting the right of age-old traditional forms to engage on equal terms with other genres - particularly the classical domain, once perceived as secure in its highbrow superiority.
"I see no reason why compositions like these shouldn't, in due course, find their way into the ordinary repertoire of Scottish orchestras," declares Brian McNeill, recently appointed as Head of Traditional Music at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow. "What they communicate, louder and clearer than ever, is that traditional and traditional-based music doesn't exist in any kind of parochial ghetto. This is big, grown-up music that deserves serious attention and respect, that can take its place in the world - take on orchestras or whatever - without going cap-in-hand to anyone."
The defiance, or confrontation, underlying McNeill's words points to the fact that - until relatively recently - traditional music in Scotland tended to be seen as the poor relation in any encounter with the classical world. Orchestras might perform arrangements of popular folk tunes for occasions like St Andrew's Night - but on the implicit understanding that this was populist, light-hearted fare. Composers such as James MacMillan might incorporate traditional melodies into their work, but such elements would be moulded to a classical template. Even Phil Cunningham's mammoth Highlands And Islands Suite - premiered at the opening of Celtic Connections 1997, and widely regarded as a folk milestone - contained plenty of uneasy musical tensions, and was generally treated in distinctly patronising terms by classical music critics.
"A lot of earlier work in this field was effectively attempting to validate traditional music in the eyes of the arts world, by presenting itself on classical music's terms," agrees Mark Sheridan. "But two such fundamentally disparate genres have to come together with mutual respect and understanding for any real integration to happen."
As Sheridan suggests, these disharmonies between folk and classical idioms are hardly surprising. Folk musicians inhabit what is still essentially an oral tradition, learning by ear from other players - even today, many do not read music - with primary importance placed on individual interpretation. Classical players, by contrast, while rigorously grounded in technical terms, are trained to subordinate their individual personalities to the conductor's or composer's vision. "If you write down, say, a traditional 2/4 pipe march, and get a classical musician to play it, it'll come out sounding nothing like a 2/4 march," says Phil Cunningham. "A lot of it is a rhythmic thing; there's a swing and a snap to traditional music, a fluidity, that's almost impossible to transcribe."
But Cunningham, McNeill and Sheridan agree this division is beginning to break down, thanks largely to Celtic Connections. "I went into this anticipating a certain resistance from the orchestra, but instead found nothing but respect for and genuine interest in the ways that folk musicians do things differently," says McNeill.
Cunningham, who worked with the RSNO on both the Highlands And Islands Suite and last year's Ceilidh, points to a growing corps of Scottish orchestral players who are becoming versed in traditional idioms. "It's all about communication and a willingness to learn - on both sides," he says. "You could say they need to loosen up a bit, and we need to tighten up a bit, in terms of adopting some of the classical side's discipline and technical rigour, but I definitely think that's starting to happen."
Many of today's traditional musicians have undergone some degree of classical training, and so find it much easier to bring the two disciplines together organically. This breadth of expertise - coupled with folk music's latterday incursions into other fields such as jazz, rock, world and dance music - goes some way towards explaining the combination of sophistication and innovation that marks New Voices commissions.
This year's premieres comprise an aural collage of song, music and spoken-word recordings by Gaelic singer Alyth McCormack; Finlay MacDonald's composition for Scottish, Irish, Breton and Spanish bagpipes; and a suite for five harps by Mary MacMaster. Previous fruits of the project - which has garnered consistent critical praise - include avant garde deconstructions of acoustic instrumentation and natural "found sounds"; a saxophone quintet; settings of William Soutar's poetry arranged for four cellos and three male voices; an extended piano duet; and a 12-part choral work in Scots, English, Gaelic and Latin.
For most of the New Voices authors, a commission represents a first opportunity to compose on a larger canvas. The experience is unanimously described as daunting in the extreme, but enormously rewarding in terms of both artistic and career development.
"I would never have got something like this together off my own bat," says Mary MacMaster, "but the way it's pushed and stretched me creatively has opened up all sorts of new possibilities."
Harpist, singer and pianist Phamie Gow, whose Lammermuir Suite, first performed two years ago, was recently released on CD, also found the experience a major confidence booster. "Apart from anything else," she says, "there's a real kudos in being able to call yourself a composer as well as a musician."
Drawing freely and boldly on influences from across the genre spectrum, New Voices is leading the way towards a fresh, fertile dialogue among Scotland's musical traditions. It's a cosmopolitan ceilidh for the 21st century.
Opening Concert (Duan Albanach/Osprey), GRCH Main Auditorium, January 16; New Voices Revisited: Fraser Fifield, Tron Theatre, January 19; New Voices: Alyth McCormack, GRCH Strathclyde Suite, January 20; Photons In Vapour, Tron Theatre, January 26; New Voices: Finlay MacDonald, GRCH Strathclyde Suite, January 27; The Curve Of The Earth, Glasgow Cathedral, February 1; New Voices Revisited: Wendy Weatherby, Tron Theatre, February 2; New Voices: Mary MacMaster, GRCH Strathclyde Suite, February
Caption: Composer Mark Sheridan, above, has written a piece for fiddler Alasdair Fraser Photograph: Kirsty Anderson; Corrina Hewat's Photons In Vapour is to be premiered
Copyright Scottish Media Newspapers, Ltd. and Scottish Media Publishing Limited Jan 13, 2002