Review: Bringing New Music To More People Says Aberdeen’s Sound Festival

Review: Bringing New Music To More People Says Aberdeen’s Sound Festival. “Our aim has always been to bring new music to more people” says Fiona Robertson, director of Aberdeen’s sound festival. It might seem like a simple intention, but it’s actually quite profound and far-reaching – certainly in the rather rarefied world of contemporary classical music – and it’s one that Robertson grapples with in many different ways.

For instance, even when presenting difficult new pieces that might confound listeners’ expectations (and let’s face it, there are plenty of those), sound does it with a sense of enthusiasm, even fun. Which is something Robertson points to in connection with the “endangered” instrument ensemble she’s assembled for this year, a round-up of earlier festivals’ focuses on the oboe, viola, horn, bassoon and double bass – hardly instruments fighting for their lives, but still somewhat overlooked by classical composers. “There’s always a danger that new music can be a bit serious, so we thought it would be fun to throw these instruments together and see what comes out at the end,” she says.

Bringing new music to much younger listeners is sound’s annual family-friendly concert, spread across the four floors of Aberdeen’s Maritime Museum. And gazing towards more distant connections, Robertson also invites in the five spectacular mallet-wielders of Percussions Claviers de Lyon, who join Scotland’s own Red Note Ensemble for a new Jules Verne-inspired theatrical piece by Franco-Lebanese composer and visual artist Zad Moultaka.

In many ways, though, sound’s five-day October festival is the public face of far more extensive behind-the-scenes work nurturing and supporting Scotland’s new music scene that continues year round, from commissioning younger composers to online composer cafés, helplines offering practical advice on key concerns, even regular listeners’ clubs picking apart recent works. “We’d always discussed how you’d go about creating a network of Scottish composers,” says Robertson. “Then suddenly you create these coffee mornings, and you’ve got that community up and running.”

Review: Bringing New Music To More People Says Aberdeen’s Sound Festival. Just as important is connecting with the people of sound’s home city, Aberdeen. One of this year’s projects offers local pipers, brass and woodwind players the chance to work together to devise a performance of the theatrical Walk On By by Japanese experimentalist Otomo Yoshihide, in two days of rehearsals led by visiting Breton bagpiper Erwan Keravec. He made quite an impact exploding the sonic possibilities of the bagpipes at sound in 2014, and returns this year with his quartet Sonneurs, bringing together four traditional instruments from Brittany. “When I started to work on new music for bagpipes, my idea was to explore what was possible that was completely different from traditional music,” Keravec explains. “So when I work with a composer, it’s as if I want them to be far away from traditional music, as though they’re a virgin to the instrument.”

He’s a Highland bagpipe player himself, an instrument that, he explains, has been used in Breton traditional music for more than a century. “When I was young, I learnt both Breton and Scottish music. But they’re really very different: when you play Breton music on Scottish bagpipes, you have to adapt it because the way of playing the ornamentation isn’t the same. But the instrument offers so many sonic possibilities – whatever you can imagine, you can probably do. You just have to get to know the instrument itself and how it works.”

Accordingly, Keravec and his three Sonneurs colleagues have been working intensively on two new quartet pieces for sound, and he’s been surprised by the results. “I’ve been doing this for ten years, and I’ve worked with 25 different composers. But the new piece by Laura Bowler that we’re premiering is the first time I’ve done something that’s connected with traditional music. Our other piece, by Géraldine Foucault, is really close to electronic music. It was a really different experience working with the two composers: Laura wrote everything down, but Géraldine gathered together tapes and sounds and gave us directions as to how to play with them.”

Building new connections with traditional instruments is clearly another facet sound can add to its generous, all-inclusive mission.

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