Garvie Bagpipe Concerto
Composer: Simon Thoumire
Soloist: Dr Simon McKerrell
Ensemble:
Piano – Harris Playfair
Fiddles – Sarah Wilson, Shona Mooney
People have asked me while writing this piece – why write a concerto?
And while you’re at it why write one for the Scottish smallpipes
– aren’t concertos only written for violin, piano, clarinet
and played with orchestras? Well as a traditional musician myself I am
very aware of the talent and technique that Scotland’s trad musicians
possess and I thought I would write a piece of music that would demonstrate
this.
The concerto is the ideal form for demonstrating our virtuosic technique
but I feel that the orchestra will often swallow a folk instrument as:
1. our techniques are not trained to project in this manner
2. the orchestra is not the natural home of the folk instrument.
I thought I would take the concerto form and use it in a traditional
music ensemble, a place I feel the instrument(s) are more at home. When
setting up the ensemble I tried to think what is natural in trad music
and I came up with, in this instance piano and two fiddles – instruments
that are readily available and played regularly.
This piece of music has been written to show off the capabilities of
the Garvie Scottish Smallpipe’s fully chromatic chanter. My thoughts
behind the music are the different traditions of the instrument from the
Scottish Borders through the Highlands taking in a bit improvisation as
we go along. There are many spaces within the music for the soloist and
the ensemble to do their own thing. In understanding that traditional
musicians do not necessarily play their music in exactly the same way
each time and I have tried to incorporate this into the piece. My hope
for this music is, when it is played, the ensemble make it their own rather
than me, as the composer, pre-prescribing it so it sounds the same all
the time.
The music is in 3 movements with an improvised cadenza in the middle
of the third movement. It lasts about 20 minutes.
This year, I have also written a Scots Fiddle Concerto and this will
be premiered on 16th November at the Scots Fiddle Festival in Edinburgh.
My future plans include a symphony for a Traditional Music Ensemble and
a clarsach concerto both due for performance in 2008.
Many thanks to Garvie Bagpipes (http://www.garviebagpipes.co.uk/), Scottish
Arts Council, Piping Live! for making this happen. Special thanks must
go to Simon McKerrell who has been very positive from the start even when
faced with a million D#s!
Simon Thoumire
e.mail: simon@scottishtraditionalmusic.com
website: www.simonthoumire.com
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