Histories and Herstories Composers part 4

Lillie Harris

Lillie Harris Photo ©Kevin Leighton

Some composers just have a feel for the North. Lillie Harris is one of these. I commissioned her to write “AND”, inspired by Jen Hadfield’s poem “Blashey Wadder”, in 2016. At that point she’d barely travelled north of Glasgow, where we’d met when Lillie was part of the RSNO Composers Hub.

Granted, Jen Hadfield’s vivid description of a Shetland storm provides plenty of inspiration, and Lillie has a real feel for words, but it was only when she subsequently visited Shetland with me that she understood just how precisely she’d captured the tumultuous weather in music – and all for a solo viola! Lillie landed at Sumburgh Airport at the tail end of just such a storm as she joined me in Shetland in November 2016. She got off lightly – as I left Baltasound in Unst, Shetland’s most northerly isle, I nearly chopped my leg off with the car door! Driving across the neighbouring island of Yell was a white-knuckle ride. I wasn’t even sure Lillie’s plane would land as I approached Sumburgh, but land it did – fortunately there was a tailwind rather than a headwind.

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Lillie joined me for a week in Baltasound and Lerwick, where we gave the premiere performances of “AND” as well as working together in Baltasound Junior High School in an improvisation workshop.

“AND” was the first piece I commissioned and a big learning process for me. Working with a composer is an intense and rewarding experience. No-one has ever played the music before (obviously!) which means there is no precedent, no prior performances to work from. The piece exists in the composer’s mind and together you work on realising that vision. I feel a great responsibility especially in the first performance of a new piece. I want to do it full justice so that the audience appreciate the new work: after all, I am the mouthpiece for the composer. It’s interesting seeing a new piece mature and, as Lillie says, at some point, you have to let it fly and let the performer interpret it in their way. After hearing me perform it in Shetland, Lillie didn’t hear me play “AND” again until January 2018, by which point I’d really got inside the piece and made it my own. The more I play it, the more I love it – the feeling of tension, of something in the air at the opening, the double stops that sound like the wind whistling through a gap in the window and the storm unleashed, whirling around at the climax of the piece.

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Ancient Orkney

Shetland gave Lillie a real taste of the north and in 2017 she was back to the Northern Isles, this time in Orkney, for the St. Magnus Festival Composers’ Course. There she wrote “Elsewhen” for sextet, inspired by the ancient monuments of Orkney. It’s a wonderfully evocative and slightly eery piece. Once again Lillie had captured the spirit of the north. “Elsewhen” is in Nordic Viola’s plans for the future and we look forward to introducing this piece to you.

You can find out more about Lillie and her music here: https://www.lillieharris.com/about

Wonderful Week in Unst!

Friday night and our week in Unst is almost over. Lillie and I are both feeling a little sad to leave. This is really a special island. Before I even start talking about how beautiful it is, I have to say what a fantastic community it is. We didn’t feel like visitors, we felt like part of Baltasound, albeit for just one week. Everyone pulled together to make our concert special and everyone had time to talk to us. We learned a lot about island life and people passed on links to other friends, pieces of music I might be interested in and many other things.

It was also good to see that other composers I have met and been in contact with, such as Kristian Blak and Adrian Vernon Fish are affectionately known here.

Lots of people at home asked me whether it wouldn’t just be dark here. There may only be 7 hours of daylight, but the quality of light needs to be seen to be believed. It is incredibly special.

Every morning had me mesmerised as I watched the pale sun colour the hills and fields in pastel shades of purple, light blue and pale green.

The big skies have the most amazing towering cloud formations as the moon sets

and the occasional rainbow lights the sky.

Sometimes the low angle of the sun seems to highlight every blade of grass in 3D.

Of course the sea is ever present, whether it’s pounding dramatic cliffs or gently washing on the picturesque beaches and I love watching the seabirds and ravens playing in the wind currents. I still haven’t seen a whale though!

We ended our week with a school workshop and concert. Baltasound Junior High School had prepared a Bjork song for us. We then worked on an improvisation with them. It was wonderful to see how they created music in such an uninhibited way. Once they were in the flow of it, we didn’t need to issue any instructions beyond the scale we’d picked. They were so inventive, finding some amazing timbres on their instruments and listening and interacting with their colleagues. They were a delight to work with and a very welcome addition to our concert programme.

My programme has evolved a lot since the first Nordic Viola concert in Kinbuck. I’m now halfway through my sabbatical and places and situations that were only imagined before have become part of my experience and so very, very special to me. This concert also saw the premiere of Lillie Harris new piece “AND”. It’s the first time I’ve worked so closely with a composer. I loved being able to discuss and develop the work together. I won’t pretend it’s an easy thing to do. I felt a real responsibility to present the work well. It captures the feeling of being in a Shetland storm so perfectly and I want to transmit that. It’s a great piece with an enormous amount of atmosphere and energy and will most definitely be staying in my repertoire beyond Nordic Viola!

Tomorrow we’ll be crossing Bluemull Sound for the last time as we head south to Lerwick. And Unst? We’ll be back!

A Tale of Two Islands

Fair Isle, Shetland

Esturoy, Faroe

A Tale of Two Islands…or rather, two groups of islands. I’ve spent most of my first week in Shetland finding out about the culture and music of these islands. One thing recurs again and again, whether it be through reading or in talking to people: closeness to the Faroes. This manifests itself in so many ways:

• Musically – shared forms, e.g. the Shetland Veesek or Faroese Visur: ballads where a solo narrator sings the story in the middle of a circle whilst the others clap or stamp in accompaniment.
• Linguistically – the old language Norn, used in Shetland and Orkney was a close relative to Faroese. Remnants of it can be seen in place names, with some road signs displaying the Norn name. Veeseks were Norn balads too.
• A shared way of life – I’ve met people in the sheep farming and wool trades, as well as seafarers, who speak with affection of trips they’ve made visiting counterparts in the Faroes.
• Bookshelves – whether in libraries or private homes place books from and about the islands alongside each other.

And yet there are no scheduled sailings or flights between Shetland and Faroe anymore, to everyone’s regret.

I’m in Unst now, practically close enough to wave to my friends in Torshavn and their music will form an important part of my programme here.

I went to church this morning and was welcomed warmly by this close community. It’s lovely to feel I have a team around me for this concert. It’s going to be a great week playing music in homes for the sheer joy of it, making music with the young people up at the school and learning about the Shetland musical tradition.

Between weathers, as they say here, I’m managing to explore the islands by bike. Usually that means 8mph one way and 25mph the other, thanks to the wind!!

Inspirations

Cycling past Flanders Moss in Stirlingshire the other day I stopped to watch around 200 geese land in the fields.

Lagarfljót

It was quite an emotional moment: these birds, which have always been a welcome portent of winter for me, became the defining sound of my stay in Egilsstaðir in East Iceland. Cackling away on the grasslands around the Lagarfljót, they were preparing for exactly the same journey back south to Scotland as I was.

 

In many ways this epitomises my musical journey. Travelling makes you look at home with new eyes. In October, I went to hear Alastair Savage and friends play in the beautiful hall at Kinbuck where Nordic Viola started its journey. The tunes from St. Kilda, Lewis and Harris struck a particular chord with me, especially with the group’s fabulous sea effects. It was evocative of the sounds of the Faroes and reminded me of the ever-present sea and weather. That sent me back to the new CD The Lost Songs of St. Kilda. (If you’re going to the Shetland or London concerts, listen out for my arrangement of Soay).

The crossover between Faroese and Shetland culture is in my mind as I practise Lillie Harris’ new piece”AND”. It’s inspired by the poem “Blashey-wadder” from Jen Hadfield’s Nigh-No-Place collection. Lillie picks up on the poet’s repetition of the word “And”, depicting the relentlessness of a North-Atlantic storm. Having experienced a few of those in the Faroes and Iceland I can say that both poet and composer are spot on!

For me, there are two main elements in Lillie’s music – an energetic triplet figure which depicts the energy and power of the storm and double stops, predominantly in diminished 5ths high on the viola that sound like the wind howling.

It’s important to me that I play new repertoire as my journey evolves and having such a wonderful new piece written for me has given me such an amazing impetus. I can’t wait to take it home to Shetland, though I’m secretly hoping for some gentler weather!

 

Shetland concerts

I will be performing two concerts in Shetland with composer Lillie Harris.

Firstly in Unst, Britain’s most northerly island.

We will also do a workshop with school children in Unst.

We then travel to Lerwick to perform the following day. You can book tickets for Lerwick online here.