recent & past projects
Friday Afternoons - Song for Flight - 2019
April 2019
Friday Afternoons - Song for Flight for Milngavie Music Club
Date: Friday 26thApril
Time: 8pm
Venue: Cairns Church, 11 Buchanan Road, Milngavie, G62 8AW
Friday Afternoons - A Song for Flight marks the culmination of a wide ranging inter-generational project for over 120 primary school children and high school instrumentalists, and is the third in a series of outreach projects for Milngavie Music Club.
Focusing on the music of Benjamin Britten and his contemporaries, the project began earlier this year with a concert at St Cyprian’s Church in Lenzie. This included a series of workshops and mentored rehearsals during which McOpera’s professional quintet of string players led by Katie Hull worked side-by-side with 19 talented high school musicians from the East Dunbartonshire Instrumental Music Service and the Music School of Douglas Academy to develop ensemble techniques, listening and communication skills, team building and musicianship.
In March, the project continued in two local primary schools with composer and vocal animator Moira Morrison, and included the composition of a new song, inspired by workshops with the children and funded by the Glasgow Airport FlightPath Fund. Entitled A Song for Flight, this piece explores how travel and flight can broaden horizons and bring opportunities to communities.
Discussing the composition of the new song, composer Moira Morrison said, “...the children gave their song depth, a poignant angle. Not only that seeing a plane flying overhead starts them wondering, questioning where they might end up and who they might become, but also asking about those people in the sky - are they flying or fleeing, and can we give them a better world here and now”.
The young voices (along with children of the East Dunbartonshire Children’s Chorus) will be accompanied by the high school string players, performing side-by-side with the professional McOpera musicians (members of the Orchestra of Scottish Opera) in the final concert of Milngavie Music Club's International concert series.
Programme to also include Britten's Friday Afternoons songs with orchestrations by Peter Kemp, and string music by Bridge, Holst and Britten.
Vocal Animateur and Composer (A Song for Flight): Moira Morrison
Orchestrations (Britten songs) by Peter Kemp, with kind permission from Snape Maltings.
McOpera Ensemble, Leader Katie Hull
East Dunbartonshire Young Strings:
drawn from the East Dunbartonshire Instrumental Music Service Senior String Ensemble and the Music School of Douglas Academy
Children from St Machan’s Primary School (Lennoxtown) and Clober Primary School (Milngavie)
East Dunbartonshire Children’s Chorus, conductor Janet Lax
McOpera Outreach Project Manager: Sue Baxendale
Supported by the Robertson Trust, the Glasgow Airport Fight Path Fund, Enterprise Music Scotland and East Dunbartonshire Arts Council.
A Song for Haddo - 2019
October 2019
A Song for Haddo 2019 - Witnesses of Time
by Moira Morrison and Peter Kemp
On October 10th, 143 local Aberdeenshire children, young people and instrumental tutors performed side-by-side with our professional McOpera musicians as part of the 2019 Haddo Arts Festival.
The song-cycle A Song for Haddo - Witnesses of Time was created for the young people of Aberdeenshire, based around the central Haddo House ethos that communities are both built and sustained by making music together.
The final composition was the culmination of months of research by composers Moira Morrison and Peter Kemp, a series of vocal workshop sessions with the children of four primary schools and side-by-side, professionally mentored rehearsal sessions with 25 high school string players.
The result was an astonishingly personal song-cycle, a series of episodes taken from different time periods, with key figures illustrating the different characters and stories left behind.
These five songs were framed by atmospheric orchestral music by Peter Kemp depicting the house’s inner theatrical ‘backstage’ life as seen from a child’s perspective, recalled by Mary Welfare in her book, 'Growing up at Haddo: A Scottish Childhood'.
Moira Morrison - Composer, Vocal Animateur, Conductor
Peter Kemp - Composer
McOpera Ensemble: Katie Hull (Leader), Elana Eisen, Peter Kemp, Aline Gow and Sarah Neil
Piano: Hebba Benyaghla
Pupils from New Deer Primary School, Rayne North Primary School, Tipperty Primary School and Udny Green Primary School
Students from Ellon Academy, Inverurie Academy, Meldrum Academy and Westhill Academy and their Aberdeenshire Instrumental Tutors
Sue Baxendale – McOpera Outreach Project Manager
Dr Cathy Guthrie – Haddo Arts Festival Administrator
A Song for Haddo – Witnesses of Time
1. Witnesses of Time - Moira Morrison: ‘old souls, strong, selfless, breathing for the earth.’
2. The Lairds of Gight - Moira Morrison: the Laird of Gight and the curse of the Hagberry Pot.
3. The Heron’s Flight from Gight - Peter Kemp: 'When the heron leaves the tree, the lands of Gight shall lairdless be...'
4. Onwards and Upwards - Moira Morrison: Lady Ishbel and the 7th Earl of Aberdeen…‘We Twa’
5. Passageways and Hideouts - Peter Kemp: “Behind every door, somebody was practising, running up and down scales, tuning a cello, scraping a fiddle” (Mary Welfare)
6. A Place to Start - Moira Morrison: the legacy of the Haddo Babies
7. Echoes - Lament on a Theme by Thomas Ravenscroft - Peter Kemp
8. A Song for Haddo - Moira Morrison
FEEDBACK
I loved being on stage and singing for my family and making them happy.
It was not boring learning about history like this. I knew nothing at all about these people from Haddo before, but now I'm almost an expert and I can hear the songs all the time.
It was superb to work alongside the composers as we could get a real insight to what their expectations were.
This is such a great opportunity for the young musicians to play alongside their peers from other schools and professional players - they don’t get this opportunity anywhere else.
Linda Moggach, Head of Faculty of Performing Arts at Meldrum Academy
This is the highlight of our year – please do it again!
Zoe Davidson, Aberdeenshire Instrumental Music Service - Music Instructor Violin
I can think of no better way to celebrate Haddo, the contribution made by our forebears, what it means to so many groups of people both locally and further afield, its living legacy of encouraging the young and providing opportunities to discover the arts and participate in creating great music and song.
Lady Joanna Aberdeen
A Song for Haddo – Witnesses of Time was commissioned by Haddo Arts, with support from the Udny Community Trust Company, The MacRobert Trust, the David & June Gordon Memorial Trust and Enterprise Music Scotland