Our artists present their own festivals
Several of our artists have their own festivals this month.
Ilan Volkov's Tectonics Festival runs across the weekend of 3 and 4 May in Glasgow. He co-founded the festival in 2012 to celebrate new music by a diverse range of composers and and it has since had editions around the world, including in Reykjavík and Athens.
Alongside curating concerts, installations and events, Volkov conducts BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, with whom he is Creative Partner, in new works by Carla Iannotta and Timothy McCormack, Øyvind Torvund's Symphony, and a new collaboration between percussionist Mark Sanders and saxophonist Rachel Musson (3 May). The next day, he conducts the closing concert of new works by Hilda Dianda, Sylvia Lim, Micheline Coulombe Saint-Marcoux, Eleanor Cully Boehringer and Barbara Monk Feldman. Radio 3's New Music Show will broadcast from the festival on 10 May.
In his introduction to the programme, Volkov explains: 'Despite being a beautiful, old-fashioned musical structure, I know that the orchestra still has much to offer. This year’s festival focuses on the profound act of listening and the potential of collaboration. Embrace the music with openness. Trust the composers, performers… and yourself! It often leads to exciting and transformative experiences.
The Loch Shiel Festival takes place from 1 to 4 May, around one of the longest lochs in Scotland. The Maxwell Quartet's cellist Duncan Strachan has been its Artistic Director since 2015 and the quartet serves as Associate Ensemble. The programme brings together local communities and celebrates traditional Highland culture alongside chamber music and other art forms. This year it offers a writing masterclass, a storytelling class, a folk session and an interactive children's workshop.
The quartet performs two programmes this year: The Music of Home (3 May) includes Haydn’s quartet op.20 no.4, and Dvorak's String Quartet in G, as well as their own folk arrangements and there will be an informal Q&A between the musicians and local artists. Hymns and Psalms (4 May) brings together spiritual and sacred works, offering their own arrangments of Gaelic Psalms, Edmund Finnis's arrangements of William Byrd and Beethoven’s quartet op.132, which includes the ‘Heiliger Dankgesang’. The quartet also joins Gaelic piper Brighde Chaimbeul to perform music from her album Carry Them With Us.
In an interview, Strachan explained the benefits of taking music into local communities in this way: 'Some of the best reactions have been along the lines of, 'I didn't think I'd enjoy this – but actually, it was really nice to be up close and kind of meet the musicians.' It has confirmed our belief that when people get access to chamber music up close, it's hard for them not to be engaged by it. It's in the makeup of the genre somehow. You can enjoy a recording of a Haydn string quartet, but there's an important human element you can make when you’re there in the room with the musicians.'
The newest festival this month is Dudok Quartet Amsterdam's Dudok Muziekdagen, 22 to 25 May, which had its first edition last year. The festival is based in the town of Kampen in the Netherlands, and is also aimed at the local community. This year's theme is Borderless, and the programme includes the Dudoks giving a Haydn quartet cycle, as well as chamber music with colleagues, and there will be walks, masterclasses, children's concerts, yoga and other events around the town.
Violinist Judith van Driel explained the quartet's hopes for the festival in an interview last year: 'We hope to attract people from the area, offering a nice way for them to get to know music and meet fantastic musicians without having to go far. In a big city like Amsterdam there’s a lot of choice simply because there are more people and musicians. One disadvantage of being in a local area is that there are fewer opportunities to hear a concert. That’s why I think it’s important to bring music to a place and connect with people there. We also have our own audience, which we’ve built up over the last 15 years, and we want to attract them to the campus from wherever they live, to discover the town and people.'
