We are over the moon to have won a Scottish Award For New Music in the Community/ Education category. Congratulations also to our joint winners SCO Soundmoves.
It’s great to see the hard work of all our brilliant participants and team members being recognised with a national award!
We look forward to having a proper celebration when the lockdown is over, but for now we will celebrate by dancing to ABBA at our online Youth Club on Tuesday.
The joy and challenge of learning music is an integral part of the lives of hundreds of thousands of young people in Scotland today. Unsurprisingly a new study has confirmed what those of us who experience this first hand already know. It has been fantastic for Tinderbox to have been part of contributing to the study and now helping to publicise its findings and promote its recommendations. If you are interested in the effect of music on young people in Scotland then have a read because this will be the defining document on the subject for the coming years!
What’s Going On Now? builds on research published in 2003, and explores the formal, informal and non-formal sectors of music education in Scotland.
For all findings and recommendations, please read What’s Going On Now?
by Ben Glue
So, my experience of the fifth anniversary Tinderbox festival. Well the story started the day before, when I turned up at the beautiful Lady Glenorchy Church, which is now the Assembly Roxy, to volunteer and lend a menial hand… physically ready, but emotionally oblivious to what lay ahead!
I arrived mid afternoon to a hive of activity. Whilst the sound engineers struggled skillfully with the logistics of a 70+ orchestra at a non “plugged in” venue, a core Tinderbox team of the most creative people I have ever met organised and fine-tuned both frantically and tirelessly.
The first sign that this was much more than just a gig was when I arrived at the foyer to find a several-tonne, oriental electric rickshaw/tuk tuk, with a bizarre fabric house built onto it, stuck half way through the tiny, ornately carved church doorway! This was an installation providing a soundscape and information about the Beijing Community Rickshaw Project, which is yet another facet of Tinderbox’s diversity you should really google. The strange vehicle also served the noble purpose of acting as a gigantic play toy for all of the young kids that turned up on the day of the festival, freeing up their parents to take in the orchestral wonders and peruse the stalls. The youngsters, whilst happily exploring the heavily decorated tuk tuk, seemed at times pleasantly confused by the lack of a coin slot.
Fluttering overhead came more wonderment. Firstly in the form of a huge cloud above the stage, that was being built by an artist (Oana Stanciu) out of nothing but a lifetimes supply of baking paper and an invisible web of extremely fine fishing line! The ‘Cumulo Nimbus’ exhibit grew and grew, symbolically as the deadline loomed nearer.
The next overhead surprise came from the growing realisation that what at first glance looked like homemade bunting, really was… and much more. This was the ‘Journey of a Thousand Wings’ installation by Kate MacKay, comprised of hundreds of silk swallows, each adorned with a hand written haiku and from many different languages. So often in life things which appear at first glance so simple turn out to be so beautiful. The idea blossomed from the title, dreamed up by a ten year old Edinburgh girl, into an international project involving people from local schools and youth groups in Edinburgh, to migrant factories and schools in Beijing, to slums in Delhi. Then later with Tinderbox’s involvement, it evolved into a multicultural orchestra, giving local youngsters the opportunity to learn and collaborate with artists from China, Chile, Bosnia, Croatia and Ghana. With the right attitude there really is no limit to what can be achieved from such a simple, yet inciteful, concept.
When the 7pm deadline for the install day arrived and we had to vacate the building, there was an air of relief, yet also an apprehension of just how much was still to be done.
First thing the following morning was dedicated to the completion of Cumulo Nimbus, which had evolved into a fifteen foot wide, ten foot high, fluffy statement, that loomed above the vast performance area, which was now an organised snake pit of cables and mic stands. By ten o’clock young musicians began to fill the church, and with this congregation of creativity, the feeling of excitement began to lift the spirits of all.
As the festival began, established bands rocked the upstairs theatre and main hall, while up and coming young bands provided a relaxed and informal place to chill on the comfy sofas that adorned the downstairs snug bar. Whether your tastes are eclectic, ambient or just down right foot stomping, there really was something there for everyone.
The crowning jewel was, of course, the Orchestral performances and collaborations. Never before have I experienced a building filled with the most wondrous of sounds. Not just from the stage but also from musicians on the balcony behind and several wondering through the crowd! the lighting, somewhat akin to a pink floyd concert, roused yet more emotional senses. It truly was a night I will never forget. the fact that this all culminated from a youth arts charity and not a major commercial production just beggared belief.
For me the absolute highlight came from a young man Thomas. He had been diligently helping out all weekend, a shy person whom I had not noticed with an instrument, or in any sound checks. When the encore came he performed an amazing rap over the top of the Tinderbox classic Bethany Lane to close the night. It truly blew me away. When I spoke to him afterwards, still in disbelief, he told the first time he had performed the piece was to nearly three thousand people including the Dalai Lama on his visit to Edinburgh in 2012! The experience had totally redefined his life he told me. Seeing the change Tinderbox had made for him, redefined mine.
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Ben Glue is a poet based in Edinburgh.
Photographs by Chris Scott
On the eve of its fourth birthday and annual awards party, we talk to executive director Janine Matheson about who they are and how far they’ve come.
“Our members span the whole creative industries,” Matheson explains. “Practice-led artists or musicians mix with these bigger, commercial creative companies. It spans all different age groups as well; people that are still in art college or studying, right up to really established creative leaders. We do a lot of events to bring people together, to help them connect to each other and support one another as they develop their creative career, their creative life.”
But she is quick to emphasise how they’re just connecting what was already there. “Edinburgh’s got an amazing cultural scene anyway, which existed before we were here – there’s a lot of support for creatives – but it does tend to be quite discipline-specific. There are loads of events for writers, or visual artists, or performers, but there’s maybe not as much that brings everybody together.”
Their network has grown significantly since its conception in 2011, now standing at around 2,100 members. That’s well over double what it was at this time last year, the constantly growing membership due in no small part to the creative diversity of those already involved.
The awards came about as a way to recognise the wealth of multi-disciplinary talent in the city. “We celebrate our birthday every year, and when we first started it was really important that, as part of that, we thank our network for their support, but also that we highlight what really amazing things people are doing. It’s quite a different type of awards in that it really is a party, it’s a celebration of what everyone’s achieved over the last year.
“The network is what makes Creative Edinburgh.”
This year the awards will take place at the newly repurposed Biscuit Factory creative hub in Leith on Thursday 12 November. Entertainment will come courtesy of bakery-meets-vinyl-party Kitchen Disco (“back by popular demand”), and there will be cakes from Lovecrumbs patisserie Twelve Triangles and beer from Heverlee.
The physical awards, too, change every year. “This year we’ve commissioned Karen Mabon, who’s a designer who works in fashion and illustration to make a selection of printed silk scarves.”
The full shortlist this year is below, featuring nine categories and three nominations per category.
Two new categories join the ranks this year, both focused on the work of individuals: Independent, for professionals and/or sole traders, and Leadership, for outstanding contributions to the sector from an industry leader. Up for the former are exquisite womenswear designer Judy R Clark, Lynsey Jean Henderson’s boutique art and design studio, and illustrator Marco Bevliacqua, aka Want Some Studio. The latter is between Scottish Games Network founder and all-round games industry don Brian Baglow, former Festivals Edinburgh director Faith Liddell, and the executive director of New Media Scotland, Mark Daniels.
The awards, and the network itself, can make a real difference to someone’s creative journey. “Over the last couple of years you get to see more of those stories: how people maybe met at a hotdesk hangout, and then they’ve pitched for a job together, and now they’re going to set up a business together… We can see all these connections – we’re here for the long haul.”
The Creative Edinburgh network has also proved useful for the wider creative community. “It’s helped Creative Scotland, the City of Edinburgh Council and other organisations that want to know more about Edinburgh as a whole. We can help with them that because we are connecting a big audience together – we’re open to anybody.”
And it doesn’t stop with Edinburgh. “We’re not alone in what we do. We connect people to other support – like Business Gateway, or Cultural Enterprise Office, or Creative Scotland – but also to other cities. We work a lot with Creative Dundee and Creative Stirling, and there’s AB+ in Aberdeen that’s developing, and Perthshire Creates, and Creative Glasgow’s on the horizon.”
So what’s next? “We’ve actually just been awarded some Creative Scotland money for a year project. At the end of November we’ll kick that off, and that’s gonna allow us to develop some of the areas that we started looking at (such as how we get our members more involved in different types of spaces). We’ve also plugged into a few international networks like in Toronto and Shenzhen. We want to think of fun, maybe more digital ways that we can connect our members with these international opportunities.”
George Sully, The Skinny
27th October 2015
Read the original article here
When Nigel Osborne was requested to write a piece marking 20 years since the conclusion of the war in Bosnia he declined, claiming he would be unable to do it justice. That may seem surprising, given the composer experienced the conflict as a humanitarian volunteer (he was instrumental, with the charity War Child, in establishing the Pavarotti Music Centre in Mostar), and subsequently created a music theatre trilogy, Sarajevo, and an opera, Europa.
What he has done, however, is produce arrangements for Bosnian Voices, a suite of songs written by inhabitants of the town of Srebrenica. It draws from a remarkable cross section of the population, including Romany children, rape victims and rock musicians; and though Osborne’s accompaniments are dark and complex, influenced by the chiming of the Orthodox church bells and the Muslim call to prayer, they never threaten to overwhelm the direct expression of these fragile, contemporary folk songs.
There is a contrast – which must be intentional – between the sophistication of a trained classical voice and the naive simplicity of the melodies. But young mezzo Hanna-Liisa Kirchin gave extraordinary expression to the women confronted with their sexual abusers on Facebook; or young pacifists faced with the choice of conscription into paramilitary gangs or summary execution.
Yet the seven-song sequence, directed with great sensitivity by Clark Rundell, was ultimately less harrowing than uplifting, and culminated in an anthemic love song to Srebrenica, written by children who no longer care “what you wear / If or where you say your prayers”. Osborne has attracted criticism in the past for placing music at the service of reportage. But since the composer hurried back for this premiere from a similar music therapy programme in Syria, one can only admire his willingness to place himself in the line of fire.
Alfred Hickling, The Guardian
5th November 2015
Original article here.
THE apparent success of Kelburn Garden Party – a primarily music-based annual festival set in the lush but bohemian environment of Kelburn Castle’s grounds on the North Ayrshire coast – can be best summed up by the fact that last year it was extended to a three-day event and this year the area covered by the festival, and the number of activities available, both jumped greatly. Alongside the addition of an acoustic tipi and an alfresco performance area called the Landing, the Neverending Glen is an inspired new art trail which takes in most of the scenic woodland on the site.
Kelburn Garden Party – Kelburn Country Park
* * * *
Those with a full weekend’s camping ticket may have found the event’s typically idyllic atmosphere spoiled slightly by the gale-force winds and rain which hit the campsite early on Saturday morning, blowing tents away and playing havoc with some of the onsite catering electrics. But it’s a testament to the Dunkirk spirit on display that things were pretty much back to normal by the time the Sun split the clouds late on Saturday afternoon.
Kelburn’s spirit is laid-back verging on hippyish, with great food, plenty of family-friendly activities – including a circus skills area, a soft play barn and an activity tent for young children – and an off-the-wall taste in leftfield music. Sonic diversity was strongly in evidence, with versatile Glasgow DJs Optimo headlining the woodland-set Viewpoint Stage on the Saturday, Scots rap crews Hector Bizerk and Loki and the Kartel both booked, and Winchester indie-folk singer and Lost Map signee Rozi Plain rounding off Sunday.
In among such choice selections, there was a strong element of world sounds, with Latin-influenced orchestras Samba Ya Bamba and Rumba De Bodas featuring on the Saturday afternoon, with Victorian Trout Conspiracy adding bluesy brass-funk vibes, and indie-rockers King Eider levering in a bit of folk violin.
With unannounced interventions including Will Pickvance playing piano somewhere up on the hill and former Altern-8 raver Mark Archer hosting a Saturday evening rave deep in the woods, it was about as well-curated and diverse a line-up as you might expect from any local boutique festival.
Yet with the introduction of the Neverending Glen, an energetic hike boasting sights including a huge, playable Roland drum machine and a tree whose fruit forms notes when touched, the singularly magical air of this distinctive weekender remains something that even the most unpleasant weather can’t spoil.
David Pollock, The Scotsman
5th July 2015
Read the original article here
A LIGHTNING rod for excitement and controversy in equal measure, the Hidden Door festival returned this week following a creatively successful outing at Market Street Vaults last year.
Hidden Door – Old Lighting Depot, Edinburgh
The premise of the event is simple: to clear a disused space in the city centre and hold a multi-arts event featuring music, theatre, film and contemporary art in the chosen location over the course of a week and a bit, an unfunded, DIY happening which will show off the potential of both the city’s hidden spaces and its creative community all at once.
One criticism levelled at the Hidden Door following last year’s event was that the spaces used might be snapped up immediately and redeveloped, as happened to Market Street Vaults. And who would have known that this fantastic place still existed had Hidden Door not shown it to them, and created a functioning multi-arts venue for Edinburgh second only to Summerhall for just one week in May?
Through a cobbled, fairy-lit courtyard fringed with food stalls, visitors pass into an arch-ceilinged vault under some tenement flats, where Donald Watson’s fluttering, slatted installation Traverse Green rises high above the bar. Nearby are some geometric relief images from Toby Paterson and one of the most photogenic sights of the whole festival, Juliana Capes’ soaring Loveletters, a flock of multi-coloured paper aeroplanes suspended by wires in simulated flight.
Across the yard are more distinctive rooms, which used to house the council lighting depot. More than last year, there’s a strong emphasis on theatre this time, and the best spot for it is the “Peely Room” – a dusty old industrial chamber where the paint hangs in spikes from the ceiling. In here there’s a version of Macbeth told entirely in silence from the Ludens Ensemble and Siege Perilous’ take on Maxim Gorky’s The Lower Depths, a tale of destitute Russians living in a flophouse on the Volga. While the staging is perhaps a little over-busy the setting is a gift for this theme and there are some stand-out performances.
Elsewhere, young performer Annie Lord explores the history of the site and the resonances of history upon a place in her mesmerising short monologue Hooves, and Darkland Collective’s The End and the Beginning is an equally hypnotic dance performance in shadowplay on a video screen, backed by live violin and electronics.
And then there’s the music programme. With input from some of the city’s most well-regarded promoters, the schedule saw Song, By Toad welcome electro-rock trio Numbers Are Futile and Adam Stafford playing an eclectic set while scaling the walls of the “Cage Room” (literally a room with a cage in it), while Tinderbox Orchestra hammered through funk-driven street symphonies on Alternative Orchestra Night. Among many, many other groups, both here and along the Grassmarket at secondary site the Bongo Club, Admiral Fallow drew a capacity crowd to the main hall on Tuesday.
It’s been a quantum leap forward from last year, although it’s a crying shame that this wonderful, creative-friendly site will be flats before long.
David Pollock, The Scotsman
29th May 2015
Read the original article here
“Another Kelburn favourite of mine is the Tinderbox Orchestra. Who we caught playing at the square stage – how to describe their sound? Imagine…an alien spacecraft hovered down, deposited an orchestra in a beam of white light, then flew off at warp speed…the orchestra start to play, music from another planet greets your ears, that’s the Tinderbox Orchestra! From what I can gather from one of their members I accosted, they are an offshoot of a community project that brings arts and culture, especially in music, to the youth, allowing opportunities for talent to flourish. Their live set is colossal, climbing, soaring melodies that builds and builds and detonates in powerful outbursts of emotional and all-encompassing peaks and rushes.Tinderbox Orchestra’s sound is inspired, progressive and downright ground-breaking, they collaborate and develop their musical quest exponentially, they are on a mission to bring the most exploratory music around, and by God they’re doing it! The Tinderbox Orchestra are a must-see musical marvel, with the most noble of causes they continue to push the envelope of orchestral music into the stratosphere, from whence it seemingly came.”
Chris Herron
New Hellfire Club Glasgow
14/10/14
Have a look at their review:
Where does the jacket I’m wearing today come from? China, I discover. Why am I checking? Because I’ve never been so pertinently made to think about the origin of my clothes than by this intimate show for one or two people, which takes place in a rickshaw.
After drinking a cup of Chinese tea, I choose an object from a basket – a scrap of denim jeans – which dictates which 15-minute performance I am going to see.
Warmly delivered by Dong Fen and Jin Lian, and translated by Tao Yang Yang, it is a conversation between two women working in a factory making the jeans I am holding a patch of.
Like all of the stories (and just a few of the hundreds created are on offer here) it is based upon interviews that the company, Hua Dan, carried out with working-class Chinese women – just a few of the millions that we rarely hear from in the West.
The two workers speculate about who the people they’re making these jeans for might be, as I – one of them – sits watching. Why are we so tall, they ask? And, most moving of all: do we spend all of our days working in a factory too?
With the performers and the majority of the company coming from the world the plays describe, it’s a humbling experience to admit that, no, I don’t.
In a production that makes the consequences of globalisation personal, it’s impressively powerful stuff.
A work that is continually being developed, it could perhaps evolve into something bigger over time.
But it is currently a simple but highly-effective look at inequality from the perspective of people who are rarely given the chance to address us, the winners of life’s financial lottery, as directly as this.
Sally Stott for The Scotsman
16/8/14
For the first time in its five year existence, Kelburn Garden Party sold out this year – not just its first allocation of around a thousand tickets but a small second release as well.
It’s a creditable achievement for a boutique festival which focuses on a sense of community and grassroots, word of mouth appeal rather than hammering a huge marketing budget, a sign that they’re doing things right and moving in a positive direction.
It’s also worth agreeing that the often-repeated point about Kelburn having one of the hands-down finest locations for a festival in Scotland is no empty hype.
The glorious weather helped, as it always does, and the presence of midges in the air did precisely the opposite, but Kelburn Castle’s status as a prominent visitor attraction just outside the ‘doon the water’ town of Largs added variety to the daytime programme particularly.
A lot of families with children were in attendance, and a fun and convivial range of activities, play areas and woodland walks (through fields of animals and a “Secret Forest”, no less) meant even those who had to return to their tent long before the late-night activities kicked in would surely have felt they’d wrung a lot out of the weekend.
For the many younger festivalgoers with no such duties, the chilled-out daytime atmosphere added to an event which cycled through a range of characters over its two-day duration (Saturday and Sunday, although there had been a small pre-party on Friday night).
There’s something about Kelburn which suggests it’s more Edinburgh in personality than Glasgow, a closer analogue to the hippyish spirit of the Bongo Club and the Forest Café than anything on the west coast.
As such, a lot of what went on reflected a variety of enduring subcultural motifs, for example a broad commitment to world and jazz styles and a bunch of DJs who bore more in common with soundsystem culture than any voguish zeitgeist-chasing.
For example, in Saturday’s late night headline slot on the Viewpoint Stage, a wooded glade which did its job in protecting from the misty rain which descended at about 10pm, a huge crowd turned out for long-serving Mancunian cut-up DJ Mr Scruff, whose set alongside his MC Kwasi fused funk, hip-hop, big beat and dubstep in a pounding summation of leftfield clubbing’s last twenty years.
The other highlight of Saturday night on the central Square Stage was Joe Driscoll and Sekou Kouyate playing their first Scottish date: the former a louche, preppy American with a basketball shirt on, a drawling rap vocal style and some fast guitar-playing fingers, the latter a tremendous kora player from Guinea, the combination a rich and exciting form of afro-funk.
Elsewhere on Saturday, the warm but rowdy R’n’B of Black Diamond Express andAaron Wright’s tender pop songwriting was highly entertaining, while Sunday started in delicate style with the Gramophone Jass Band and wonderful, Django Reinhardt-obsessed jazz quartet Rose Room, before introducing the Scots-samba sound of Samba Ya Bamba, striking electro-pop outfit Conquering Animal Sound and many more.
Nick Mitchell
The Scotsman
Published 8 July 2013
Doubling as a 300-seat lecture theatre for Edinburgh University’s Music Department, the 1859 Reid Concert Hall is an elegant performance space with deep red walls and a fine sound. On this particular evening an audience of around a couple of hundred gathered for a seven-item concert given by the Edinburgh Contemporary Music Ensemble. Founded in 2006, this orchestra comprises students from the university alongside musicians of various vintages from Edinburgh’s musical life, including Edinburgh Youth Orchestra.
The title of Tom David Wilson’s Estrif hints at the work’s crafted “strife” in uncovering a melodic theme. In this sense, along with its inconclusive ending, it shares some features with Ives’ The Unanswered Question, the difference being that this is a much more dynamic piece. Much of the dynamism was conveyed by excitingly crisp brass writing in which the ensemble’s trumpet section stood out.
Oliver Searle’s Harbour Dreams harked back to his childhood memories of daydreaming while fishing off the harbour wall in his home town of North Berwick. The parallel ideas of the harbour opening out to sea and a young mind looking out towards an unknown, but surely sunny future, was nicely clinched by the predominance of open-sounding perfect fourths. These calm, optimistic sounds were nicely contrasted with more rhythmic and percussive ones, which reminded me of the lightly clinking sound of moored boats in a calm harbour.
Despite having a master’s degree in composition, and having worked as a music engraver, Luke Drummond now works as a software developer and this transformational kind of outlook, I feel, must have influenced his The First, The Second, The Third, and so on in which he “transcribed” seven multiphonic pieces for alto flute by ECME’s own Richard Worth. Multiphonics occur when players of melodic instruments, obtain two or more notes from the harmonic series by, for example, overblowing. Drummond’s mathematical treatment (L-system transformation) of the stimulus resulted in what I can only describe as a mesmerisingly multilayered orchestral pointillism. I noted some intense concentration on the faces of some players in this piece which was impressively held together by prizewinning conductor James Lowe.
Transformation, in the form of translation also featured in Harry Whalley’s Jammerwoch. This work for soprano and orchestra translates lines from Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky variously into Swedish, Latin, French and Italian. Soprano Peyee Chen attacked the work’s angular lines with quiet heroism and very impressive pitching. Just occasionally her sound was challenged by perhaps overly enthusiastic orchestral forces.
The interval, spent sipping complimentary wine in the adjoining rooms, which feature Edinburgh University’s impressive John Donaldson collection of instruments, was followed by a doubly collaborative work, Tinder. Composed by six members of Tinderbox, “a dynamic hub for youth music and arts in Edinburgh”, the piece was then arranged and orchestrated by Harry Whalley and oboist Alice Kelly, the latter of whom performs with both ECME and Tinderbox. Rock-orientated, but by no means predictably metric, this buoyant piece featured impressive drum and bass-guitar contributions from Sam Irvine and Ruairidh Morrison. Enhancing the blend of youth and experience already present in ECME, this piece shone with a sense of fun and I look forward to further collaborations between the two groups.
Simon David Smith’s Against All Things Ending is subtitled “elegy for orchestra.” His own programme note explained how although inspired by the book of the same name by American science-fiction writer Stephen Donaldson, the piece is without programmatic content and is more of a reflection of the “overall mood and feeling” of the book. Somehow, this notion made a great deal of sense to me, reminding me of books in whose language and locus I had so enjoyed residing that I delayed finishing. Smith is a phenomenal pianist and great exponent of contemporary music. However, this piece revealed a more romantic disposition, specifically a Wagnerian one present in references to Tristan. Although not overtly rhythmically difficult, this piece presented the orchestra with their greatest challenge of the evening and I was impressed by the steadying left hand of Lowe averting early entries at points where experience alerted him to such danger.
Unlike some contemporary music events, which can tend towards the earnest, this concert was all about fun and love of the music. All the composers mentioned so far were present and seemed delighted with the performances, as did the enthusiastic audience. I would certainly enjoy hearing these piece again. The orchestra seemed to be having a great time and this sense of fun was communicated in the closing item, a boisterous rendition of György Ligeti’s rousing 1951 Concert Românesc, which featured virtuoso Romany-style solo contributions from clarinettist Calum Robertson and orchestra leader Elizabeth Beeston.
Review by Alan Coady
Photograph by Trond Husebo
Click here for the original article
Jo Bell
The List 20.12.12
Set in the cavernous Summerhall, colour coded arrows navigate labyrinthine corridors to four main performance spaces, all filled with divergent discoveries. An old lecture theatre hosted a self pegged ‘acquired set’ from Broken Records frontman Jamie Sutherland, who, bereft without his band, used the intimate setting to test new pop friendly material and end with a cover of Bill Fay’s ‘Be Not So Fearful’. Upstairs multi-instrumental funketeers The Black Diamond Express brought a retro musical touch to the show, duetting with the next act, samba drummers Pulse of the Place, as they lined the balcony above. Up and coming Edinburgh four piece The Dark Jokes’ energetic performance was a highlight, while fellow capital-dwellers North Atlantic Oscillation’s glacial, swirling soundscapes hurtled to a rockier, more momentous edge as their set progressed.
As organiser Jack Nissan highlighted the Tinderbox Orchestra proved to be the stars of the evening, their mighty numbers assembling as the crowd jostled for elbow room. A carousel of conductors brought forth booming covers, symphonic original compositions and unique collaborations, sweeping from the deeply atmospheric to the psychedelic, contemporary and soulful. Another conductor’s scribbled words, arrows and symbols were projected live on to massive screen for the sections to respond to, an impressive experimental addition which realised the wondrous threads of compositional skill and musical talent running through the enthralling live experience.
With music continuing in the form of rambunctious folk from Fox Gang and an after party stretching into the wee small hours, this Tinderbox had already kindled something that dazzles.
Click here to see the original article
A guitarist and a trumpet player began the performance before making their way through the mall and picking up extra musicians who emerged from shops, cafes, benches and escalators. The colourful event culminated with the entire 25-piece youth orchestra busking in the shopping mall to a piece they had written called Meltdown.
More than 50 shoppers joined on the end of the procession as they made their way through the centre. The students themselves came up with the idea and set about trying to put it into action, phoning around various shops in the centre to seek permission.
Jack Nissan, 27, who lives on Leith Walk, is the founder and co-ordinator of the orchestra, which is Edinburgh’s first completely non-classical orchestra. He would like to hold similar public events in future, possibly at other shopping centres. Mr Nissan, who plays the saxophone in the orchestra, said:
“It was fantastic. We didn’t really know how it was going to go down because it was in a shopping mall so we couldn’t rehearse it, but it worked perfectly. We picked up a really good crowd and got a good following through the shopping centre. We ended up in an escalator loop by John Lewis with the orchestra going up and down for a while. It worked a treat.”
The event raised around 300 from collections and sponsors, which will go towards putting on more events for young people and taking the orchestra to the Scottish music festival Garden Party at Kelburn Castle next month. The group later performed a number of pieces outside the main entrance of the shopping centre,including Fire by Jimi Hendrix.
The orchestra was set up in October and mainly rehearses at the city’s Jazz Bar. Its members range in age from 13 to 21. Mr Nissan said:
“Lots of people had their cameras out on Sunday and were taking videos and photographs. It was hilarious. I think there was a bit of surprise and shock and then everyone joined in. I would love to do something similar in future. It was an interesting learning curve, especially for the students, to learn a piece by heart and be very flexible with it. It was very different to how a normal orchestra works, which involves reading music strictly from the page. Orchestras are stuck in a conventional classical shell so often. The idea is to use the depth and power of the orchestra to play modern styles of music which are meaningful to young people.”
Edinburgh Evening News June 2011
Click here to view the original article
I have been asked by one of the young musicians from the Tinderbox Orchestra to write an introduction for a new blog that we are starting. It is something of a big moment in this project, and for me personally, as the young musicians who the project was designed for are now starting to take real ownership of it, taking on the jobs and responsibilities required to make it happen and putting forward the ideas that are going to make it grow. And they are doing so with an eagerness and enthusiasm that makes me feel that this little idea we decided to pursue just under a year ago is actually working, and that it might really have the potential to do something worthwhile, novel and exciting with youth music… and hopefully with music too.
So what is the Tinderbox Orchestra? Well the overall goal is to do something new, creative and exciting with an orchestra. The idea is to take it out of its conventionally classical shell and use the astonishing depth, variety and power that an orchestra offers to play alternative styles of music that are meaningful and inspiring to this generation of young people. In a way, to treat an orchestra more like a band (a really good one hopefully!).
The Tinderbox Orchestra uses a mix of traditional orchestral instruments (strings, woodwind, brass, percussion) and modern instruments such as drumkits, saxophones, guitars and electronic instruments. Young musicians and tutors come from all backgrounds, including rock, classical, jazz, folk and electronic music. We write original compositions, arrange and perform the music of contemporary artists (e.g. Bjork, Jimmi Hendrix, Radiohead), and collaborate with local bands, orchestrating their songs and performing alongside them.
We are also keen to collaborate across the arts to bring performances and events to life, and hopefully this will also lead to some imaginative and interesting future projects too. The Tinderbox Orchestra currently stands at a 35 piece band, involving young musicians aged between 13 and 21, plus the tutors who also play in the band. We would love this to grow too. The dream vision is a full on, standing, dancing 100 (or more!) piece orchestra performing awe-inspiringly brilliant original music to a young crowd at venues and festivals that young people would love to play at! We are only just in our second term, but the first concert was definitely on the right lines (see video below) and we’re playing our first music festival this July at the Garden Party at Kelburn Castle, so who knows, we might just get there!
Educationally, the overall aim is to get young people more actively involved in the music they play. Ultimately, we want the young musicians who make up this orchestra to guide it wherever it goes, and already they are putting forward many of the ideas for the project and the pieces we play, and they have also been involved in the writing of much of the music.
For Sunday’s gig, two of the young musicians composed and arranged pieces, and we wrote a group composition altogether (all 35 of us!). We have also just set up a team of young musicians to take on some of the organisational roles involved, and I get the feeling that before long they’ll be running the show themselves! We run 10 week courses during termtimes with weekly rehearsals on Sunday afternoons.
These include full orchestral practices, sectional practices and a series of educational workshops in aspects of contemporary music. The tutors come from a wide range of musical backgrounds, including jazz, rock, classical, folk and electronic music. They are all active musicians and represent a diverse spread of the local band scene in Edinburgh with players from the Hidden Orchestra, Black Diamond Express, Southern Tenant Folk Union, Orchestra del Sol, the Horndog Brass Band, Digital Jones, Lipsync for a Lullaby, Black Cat and others. Several tutors also play for prestigious orchestras including the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
While Tinderbox is a youth project, I believe the more ambitious, genuinely creative and high quality it can be as a musical and artistic project in its own right, the more inspiring and educationally worthwhile it will be for young people. As such, we want to set our sights high, continue to encourage the collaborative spirit and youth involvement that has got it this far, and always be open and eager to experiment with new ideas and interesting projects. With so many instruments, so many people, and such a massive palette of sounds, the potential to be creative with music and performance is huge. The question posed to the orchestra at the start of this term was: “What is the most off the wall, ambitious and creative idea you can think of for an orchestra?” I hope we keep asking ourselves these kind of questions as whatever and wherever it is, it is where we want to be!
The Tinderbox Orchestra is the main focus and first stage of the Tinderbox Project, a broader initiative which aims to bridge the gap between youth music and the contemporary music and arts scene, providing opportunities for young people to work with a wide range of professional artists and encouraging creativity, network building and excellence in youth music.
A bit of a mouthful, but essentially the idea is to involve young people in genuinely creative and inspiring contemporary music and arts projects, and to bring them into the exciting scene of professional bands, musicians, film-makers and other artists that underlie Edinburgh’s contemporary arts scene and which make this city tick.
Guardian Edinburgh Local May 2011
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IT’S a blue sky sunny Sunday afternoon when everyone who can be outside is outside enjoying the welcome warmth of the spring sunshine.
In Chambers Street, where tourists visiting the Museum of Scotland and the nearby Surgeons’ Hall museum mingle with busy locals going about their business, music wafts through the air: the mellow tones of a horn section, soaring strings, the deep vibe of a double bass and the occasional gentle “ting” from the percussionist’s triangle.
Soothing and calm, it’s distinctively and obviously classical, orchestral, traditional. Or at least it is until a lead guitar butts in, a drum kit is given something of a vicious pounding and bluesy-rock vocals gatecrash. Suddenly the sound that drifts along Chambers Street is an astonishing clash of rich tradition and modern electrics – it’s Mozart meets Hendrix, Mendelssohn on collision course with Bjork, Radiohead on a G string. The music is filtering up to street level from a cellar bar where a group of talented young musicians has gathered. They are perched on the Jazz Bar’s red plastic seats and they’re flexing their musical muscles with one of the country’s most unusual orchestras. For although they form part of what is ultimately a 25-piece classical orchestra, the sound they produce could hardly be further removed from the traditional ensemble.
Jack Nissan, 27, the musical director of The Tinderbox Orchestra, stands beside the bar, arms aloft, preparing to put the young musicians – they range in age from just 15 to 21 – through their own particular rendition of Radiohead’s Paranoid Android. Later the young players relax into one of the most classic of thumping rock songs, Jimi Hendrix’s Fire. Led by local funk and soul guitarist Aki Remally – among a number of professional musicians giving up their time to collaborate with the fledgling youth orchestra – it was one of the numbers that brought the house down at their first ever performance at Pilrig Church Hall in December.
All of which could well be enough to make Beethoven roll over. Instead the result is vibrant, powerful and, grins Jack, incredibly exciting. “A lot of the music I listened to when I was young was not the music I was being told to play,” he says, explaining the roots of a musical project that has blown apart the traditional notion of the word orchestra. I listened to bands like the Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Radiohead as a kid, but I’d be given classical pieces to learn – the kind of music I’d probably never listen to. It was one of my major gripes that I was never asked what I’d like to play. That kind of approach can put young people off learning music.”
It was 18 months ago and he’d just cut his teeth working with the Hidden Door Festival, a small arts project at the Roxy Art House that brought musicians together with poets, artists with filmmakers. Armed with a fresh boost of confidence, he set about pursuing his idea to merge the contemporary music he loved to listen to with the classical sounds he’d been trained as a youngster to play. He asked around and was encouraged by a positive vibe from local youth orchestras, schools, university music departments and professional classical musicians, all keen to embrace this notion of a youth orchestra that plays modern music.
Auditions attracted talented schoolchildren and students, keen to explore a more modern side to their violin or cello and tutors happy to give up their spare time to a ground-breaking project that merged classical sounds with contemporary music and even opened the door to collaborations with Edinburgh rock, blues and jazz bands.
“An orchestra is such a phenomenal musical beast,” Jack adds with a grin. “It has so much depth and power but it’s stuck in a classical shell for a lot of the time. But you can use an orchestra to play any style of music. And I thought it would be fantastic to apply it to the music that I listen to.”
Toby Mottershead nods in agreement. He didn’t learn to play guitar until he was older, but now the frontman of Edinburgh-based blues and roots band, Black Diamond Express, is passing on a knowledge of the music scene gleaned from the other side of the musical spectrum to young classically-trained musicians who might never otherwise share a stage with him. The result will hit the stage next month, when The Tinderbox Orchestra joins the Black Diamond Express and fellow Edinburgh band Lipsync for a Lullaby for its second public performance. “We work in an entirely different way,” Toby explains. “For example, I don’t work from a score, but that is how these guys are trained to play. So my hope is to encourage them to play like a “normal” band.” He takes to the Jazz Bar stage to perform one of his band’s own songs. It’s only the second time the orchestra has attempted Live Free or Die, a roots, bluesy rock tune, but the result is deep, multi-layered and vibrant.
Later the orchestra test their skills playing a piece they have written themselves – distinctly modern, it has an up-to-date feel but a definite classical mood. For young musicians Amanda Currie, 19, who plays clarinet and is studying music at Napier University, and Edinburgh University music student Maya McCourt, 23, Tinderbox offers a freedom to explore their talent into new areas and network with other musicians. “I play oboe and cello,” explains Maya, “which are such classical instruments. But this means I can have the chance to try something different. I like playing classical music but not so keen on listening to it.”But here I like playing and I like listening.”
Amanda nods: “Classical music has rules, they’re flexible rules but they’re still there. What this does is encourage you to think about music as a whole and not just one denomination. It’s been fantastic.”
The benefits work in the opposite direction for bass guitarist Doug Kemp, 23, a Napier University student, who is learning how his instrument can work within a full orchestra. “It’s different, I’ve got to listen more and, because I’m quite a “busy” player, I’ve got to hold back a bit more.”
And with that, it’s back to rehearsals: countdown is on to May 22 at Pilrig Church Hall, when Tinderbox Orchestra will again challenge its audience to rethink their perception of orchestral music and later in summer when they will appear at Kelburn Garden Party in North Ayrshire.
For Jack, the wall of sound that fills the Jazz Bar is confirmation of his teenage hope that orchestral music could be about more than 19th century composers. “This is very creative and exciting and it’s bringing something modern to Edinburgh,” he says. “To me, it just made a lot of sense to have young people playing the kind of music they want to listen to.”
The Scotsman
Published April 2011
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