Friday Night Club: St Andrew's Celebration

Friday Night Club Finale Fri 3 Jul 2020: 7.30pm ST ANDREW’S CELEBRATION with Phil & Aly John Logan Conductor Phil Cunningham Accordion Aly Bain Fiddle Eddi Reader Vocals Julie Fowlis Vocals National Youth Pipe Band of Scotland Royal Scottish National Orchestra Recorded on Sat 26 Nov 2016, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall This performance was recorded for the RSNO Archive. Supported by the Iain and Pamela Sinclair Legacy.

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Welcome Little did we know, when lockdown began in March and we began the RSNO Friday Night Club, that this musical lifeline would run for this long. Tonight, as lockdown begins to slowly ease, we’re delighted to broadcast our fifteenth – and final – concert in the series.

It has been a real pleasure to share these moments with you each week. To bring worldclass artists such as Sir Roger Norrington, Neeme Järvi and our Music Director Thomas Søndergård directly to you in the comfort of your home.

Nothing can ever replace that special feeling of a live performance – that moment when you take your seat and feel the atmosphere build as you wait for the conductor to raise the baton and the magic begins. However, in these difficult times, these concerts are a way for us to connect and to remind us that we will be back together in the concert hall in the future.

Thank you for watching and supporting Scotland’s National Orchestra. Please stay safe and well. We are very much looking forward to playing live again for you.

Alistair Mackie CHIEF EXECUTIVE

St Andrew’s Celebration National Youth Pipe Band of Scotland Youngest Ancient Mariner: Farewell to Govan (Cunningham-Logan)

Phil & Aly Phil & Aly Play-on (Logan) Charlie Hunter’s Jig Kid on the Mountain (Cunningham-Logan)

Eddi Reader & Julie Fowlis Wild Mountainside (Douglas-McCrae)

Phil & Aly

Flatwater Fran (Cunningham-Logan) Tam the Gun March (Cunningham-Logan) – Ack Stirling’s March (Cunningham) – Wee Michael’s March (McCusker) Irish Beauty (Cunningham-Thomas) The Hut on Staffin Island – Hull’s Reel (Cunningham/Rankin-Fletcher)

Eddi Reader Meg of the Glen/Hogties Reel (Tannahill/Cunningham-Logan) Gloomy Winter’s Noo Awa’ (Tannahill-Logan)

Phil & Aly Full Circle Jigs (Cunningham-MacMillan/Logan)

Eddi Reader, Julie Fowlis, Phil & Aly Auld Lang Syne (Traditional-McCrae)

RSNO Friday Night Club: St Andrew’s Celebration

Phil Cunningham ACCORDION Aly Bain FIDDLE

Having toured together all over the world since 1986, Phil Cunningham and Aly Bain recorded their first album, The Pearl, in 1994 and followed it with many more highly acclaimed albums, including Five and Twenty in 2016. The pair have won the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards’ Best Duo Award and have been nominated in the Scottish Traditional Music Awards for Live Act of the Year.

Phil Cunningham is a world-famous accordion player and composer. He was listed in 1996 in The Scotsman as one of ‘Scotland’s most influential people’. In recent years his workload has included numerous commissions for TV and film, and an increasing amount of work as musical director for television and theatrical events. His Highlands and Islands Suite and other collaborations have been highlights of the Celtic Connections festival in Glasgow. In 2002 Phil received an MBE for his contribution to Scottish music. His musical documentaries

are regularly seen on TV, invariably involving his passion for the accordion. He has also produced and recorded with top musicians, including Mark Knopfler, for whom he played on Get Lucky and Privateering.

Aly Bain is the best-known and most significant fiddle player in the Celtic tradition – arguably the finest of all time. As a founder member of The Boys of the Lough, he has toured extensively in America, Europe and the UK. In 1994 he was awarded an MBE in recognition of his services to music, and in 1999 received an Honorary Doctorate of Music from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland). In 2013 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. Aly launched the popular BBC TV series Transatlantic Sessions, in which he and Phil appeared, in 1995 and the duo regularly appear in live Transatlantic Session shows.

Scotland’s National Orchestra

Eddi Reader VOCALS collaborative material or carefully chosen cover versions resulted in Mirmama (1992), Eddi Reader (1994), Candyfloss & Medicine (1996), Angels & Electricity (1998) and Simple Soul (2001).

In 2001 Eddi returned to Glasgow, where she recorded the classic Songs of Robert Burns, featuring the RSNO, released to international acclaim in 2003. Awarded the MBE in 2006 for services to singing, she took her Burns songs on tour all over the world. In 2006 she released Peacetime on Rough Trade Records, featuring the finest traditional players in the UK and produced by Folk Musician of the Year, John McCusker. Love is the Way, Eddi’s seventh solo album, was released in 2009 on Rough Trade.

Her rare blend of meltingly true vocals and towering romanticism combined with a pragmatic nature make Eddi Reader a unique and powerful figure in contemporary British music.

She grew up in Glasgow and Irvine, busking and performing at local folk clubs. In the early 1980s she travelled around Europe with circus and performance artists before moving to London, where she quickly became a soughtafter session vocalist, harmonising with Annie Lennox on tour with Eurythmics. However, it was the short-lived but warmly remembered Fairground Attraction that brought her to the attention of a much wider audience. The single Perfect and parent album First of a Million Kisses both topped the British charts.

Her subsequent albums signalled her ability to assimilate musical styles and make them her own. Her instinct for self-penned and

Eddi’s Hollywood debut was in 2010’s Me and Orson Welles with Zak Efron and Claire Danes, in which she played a chanteuse singing Let’s Pretend That There’s A Moon with the Jools Holland Orchestra.

Her latest studio album, Cavalier, featuring 16 favourite traditional and contemporary songs, was released on Reveal Records in 2018.

RSNO Friday Night Club: St Andrew’s Celebration

Julie Fowlis VOCALS Julie Fowlis is a multi-award-winning Gaelic singer who is deeply influenced by her early upbringing on the Outer Hebridean island of North Uist. With a career spanning five studio albums and numerous highprofile collaborations, her ‘crystalline’ and ‘intoxicating’ vocals have enchanted audiences around the world.

Nominated as Folk Singer of the Year at the 2018 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, and Best Artist at the Songlines World Music Awards, Julie is an engaging live performer who has graced stages from village halls in the Highlands to Carnegie Hall in New York, and collaborated with the BBC Concert Orchestra at the Proms in London’s Royal Albert Hall.

Since the release of her album alterum in 2017, she has been touring with Transatlantic Sessions, performing sell-out shows in London, throughout the UK, the US, Canada and Europe, and has completed a major 14-18NOW commission with Highland musician Duncan Chisholm to commemorate the centenary of Stornoway’s Iolaire tragedy. She has also worked on Lost Words Spell Songs, a collective and collaborative musical response to the book

by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris.

Julie sang the theme songs for Brave, Disney Pixar’s Oscar, Golden Globe and BAFTA winning animated film set in the ancient Scottish highlands. It was a worldwide hit, and the song Touch the Sky was longlisted for an Oscar in 2013.

Julie has also collaborated, recorded and performed with artists such as violin virtuoso Nicola Benedetti, GRAMMY Award-winning James Taylor and singing star Mary Chapin Carpenter.

Scotland’s National Orchestra

National Youth Pipe Band of Scotland

The National Youth Pipe Band of Scotland is a non-competing cutting-edge performance pipe band for 10-25 year-olds. Launched in 2002 by the National Piping Centre, the NYPBoS is the first and only organisation of its kind to bring together Scotland’s most talented young musicians at a national level. Membership is drawn from across Scotland’s 32 councils, and young pipers and drummers come from an array of different competing pipe bands and musical backgrounds, brought together as a collection of the very best chosen to play for their country.

As well as touring, the NYPBoS is keen to develop the awareness of the band to potential members and to broaden its audience with concerts at home. In Scotland, it has played in many regional communities, including major concerts in Aberdeen, Dundee, Perth, Edinburgh and Glasgow.

The NYPBoS has toured the world, with performances in China, Spain, Italy, Germany, Mexico and Northern Ireland, has appeared on the children’s television show Blue Peter, and performed in both Basel and Zürich at the world-acclaimed Christmas Tattoo.

PIPE SERGEANT Daniel McDermott

The NYPBoS provides unique development opportunities for its young members and an exceptional musical experience for its audiences.

RSNO Friday Night Club: St Andrew’s Celebration

John Logan CONDUCTOR John Logan has enjoyed almost 30 years of playing in many of the UK’s top orchestras, including the London Symphony Orchestra, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra with Simon Rattle and a 17-year tenure as Associate Principal Horn with the RSNO. As well as holding the position of Head of Brass at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, John is equally busy as a conductor, arranger and composer, and has a special interest in bringing the worlds of folk and traditional music and rock and pop music together with the symphony orchestra.

He has written for and performed with artists such as Emeli Sandé, KT Tunstall, Phil Cunningham and Aly Bain, Barbara Dickson, Eddi Reader, Karen Matheson, Twin Atlantic, Julie Fowlis and Emily Smith. He worked with Dougie MacLean on his album Till Tomorrow with the RSNO and also on arrangements for his album Caledonia Cantata.

John has orchestrated for and conducted the RSNO, along with Scottish bands and performers Admiral Fallow, The Twilight Sad, Roddy Hart, King Creosote, Idlewild, Frightened Rabbit, Capercaillie and Justin Currie, and in 2013 was commissioned by Tripswitch productions to write and record the soundtrack for the Scottish short film Whistle My Lad starring Ewan Stuart, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.

Working with Ronnie Browne, John’s version of Flower of Scotland for pipes and full orchestra was used for the medal ceremonies at the 2014 Commonwealth Games. John’s most recent collaboration was as conductor/ arranger with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra for the four-part BBC series Emeli Sandé’s Street Symphony.

Scotland’s National Orchestra

Royal Scottish National Orchestra

Formed in 1891 as the Scottish Orchestra, the company became the Scottish National Orchestra in 1950, and was awarded Royal Patronage in 1977. The Orchestra’s artistic team is led by Danish conductor Thomas Søndergård, who was appointed RSNO Music Director in October 2018, having previously held the position of Principal Guest Conductor. Hong Kong-born conductor Elim Chan succeeds Søndergård as Principal Guest Conductor. They are joined by Assistant Conductor Junping Qian.

The RSNO performs across Scotland, including concerts in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee, Aberdeen, Perth and Inverness. The Orchestra appears regularly at the Edinburgh International Festival and the BBC Proms, and has made recent tours to the USA, China and throughout Europe.

The Orchestra is joined for choral performances by the RSNO Chorus, directed by Gregory Batsleer. The RSNO Chorus evolved from a choir formed in 1843 to sing the first full performance of Handel’s Messiah in Scotland. Today, the RSNO Chorus is one of the most distinguished large symphonic choruses in Britain, with a membership of around 160. The Chorus has performed nearly every work in the standard choral repertoire, along with contemporary works by composers including John Adams, Howard Shore and James MacMillan.

Formed in 1978 by Jean Kidd, the acclaimed RSNO Junior Chorus, under its new director Patrick Barrett, also performs regularly alongside the Orchestra. Boasting a membership of over 400 members aged from 7 to 18, it has built up a considerable reputation singing under some of the world’s most distinguished conductors and appearing on radio and television.

The RSNO has a worldwide reputation for the quality of its recordings, receiving two Diapason d’Or awards for Symphonic Music (Denève/ Roussel 2007; Denève/Debussy 2012) and eight GRAMMY Awards nominations. Over 200 releases are available, including the complete symphonies of Sibelius (Gibson), Prokofiev (Järvi), Glazunov (Serebrier), Nielsen and Martinů (Thomson) and Roussel (Denève) and the major orchestral works of Debussy (Denève). Thomas Søndergård’s debut recording with the RSNO, of Richard Strauss’ Ein Heldenleben, was released on Linn Records in 2019.

The RSNO’s pioneering learning and engagement programme, Music for Life, aims to engage the people of Scotland with music across key stages of life: Early Years, Nurseries and Schools, Teenagers and Students, Families, Accessing Lives, Working Lives and Retired and Later Life.

The team is committed to placing the Orchestra at the centre of Scottish communities via community workshops and annual residencies across the length and breadth of the country.

RSNO Friday Night Club: St Andrew’s Celebration

On Stage GUEST LEADER

DOUBLE BASS Tom Berry

GUEST PRINCIPAL

TUBA John Whitener

Cheryl Crockett Patrick Curlett Barbara Paterson Jane Reid Elizabeth Bamping Alan Manson Caroline Parry Lorna Rough Liam Lynch Emily Nenniger Katie Jackson

John Clark Sally Davis David Inglis

TIMPANI Martin Gibson

SECOND VIOLIN Xander van Vliet

GUEST PRINCIPAL

FIRST VIOLIN Charlotte Scott

PRINCIPAL

FLUTE Helen Brew

ASSOCIATE PRINCIPAL

Janet Richardson PRINCIPAL PICCOLO

OBOE Peter Dykes

Irena Klimach

PRINCIPAL

PRINCIPAL

PERCUSSION Simon Lowdon PRINCIPAL

John Poulter Stuart Semple HARP Pippa Tunnell

Jacqueline Spiers Marion Wilson Wanda Wojtasinska Christopher Ffoulkes Sophie Lang Nigel Mason Penny Dickson John Robinson Gillian Risi

CLARINET Josef Pacewicz

VIOLA Tom Dunn

HORN Christopher Gough

Ian Budd Susan Buchan David Martin Fiona West Maria Trittinger Francesca Hunt Nicola Boag

Alison Murray Jamie Shield David McClenaghan Andrew McLean

FIDDLE Chloë Bryce Isla Callister Bernadette Kellermann Madeleine Stewart

TRUMPET Christopher Hart

KIT John Lowrie

CELLO Aleksei Kiseliov

Marcus Pope

PRINCIPAL

PRINCIPAL

Kennedy Leitch Arthur Boutillier Rachael Lee Ruth Rowlands Sarah Digger

Robert Fairley

ROYAL CONSERVATOIRE OF SCOTLAND TRADITIONAL PLAYERS

BASSOON Simon Davies

GUITAR Jenn Butterworth

ASSOCIATE PRINCIPAL

ASSISTANT PRINCIPAL

Anthea Wood

PRINCIPAL

PRINCIPAL

TROMBONE Lance Green

ASSOCIATE PRINCIPAL

Emma Bassett Alastair Sinclair

PRINCIPAL BASS TROMBONE

RCS LECTURER IN PRACTICAL STUDIES

PIPES AND WHISTLE Robyn McKay

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We hope that you are enjoying the RSNO’s Friday Night Club performances The RSNO is a registered charity, and, with many others, will be severely impacted by this crisis, which is touching the lives of each and every one of us. The support of our audiences and supporters continues to inspire and uplift us, now more than ever. We would like to take this opportunity to send our support and best wishes to you and your families during this challenging time.

In common with many of our colleagues around the country, we have been forced to cancel concerts and events. Ticket sales count for a large part of our income and these cancellations will have a considerable financial impact. We are therefore asking you to consider supporting the RSNO at this very difficult time, by donating the cost of your tickets or by joining

rsno.org.uk

the RSNO Circle. We realise for many, this may not be possible. However, if you are able to consider this request, we would be extremely grateful for your generosity.

Please donate online at rsno.org.uk/coronavirus or visit rsno.org.uk/circle to join today.

In the meantime, we continue to work hard to enrich lives and support the well-being of our community through free, accessible online music and content.

We are a family and a community brought together by music. When our Orchestra returns to the stage, we look forward to welcoming you back to the RSNO and enjoying many more great concerts together.