Music Archive

Edinburgh Youth Gaitherin is raising funds to record an album of music developed by seven young musicians who have spent the past year investigating recordings and photographs in the School of Scottish Studies at Edinburgh University.

As Scots bands confidently perform in their own accent, and traditional music ingredients are embraced by many of them, the facility for taking the best of US influences and making something new might not be as revered as it once was.

WHILE we mere mortals, after a busy concert season, are preparing to decamp to our country estates, lakeside villas or the secluded turrets of Castle Hame'll-Dae-Me, spare a thought for the troubadours of the BBC SSO who, after a season that culminated last week with a pulverising Rite Of Spring, have set aside the buckets and spades to climb on a plane today and fly off for a seven-concert tour of Holland and Belgium with conductor Ilan Volkov and four different programmes: that's a lot of air miles and even more notes.

This year's Cottier Chamber Project begins with a goodbye.

Geddy Lee is defining the essence of Rush.

Violinist Laura Ayoub (pictured) swept the board at this year's Glasgow Music Festival, being named most outstanding performer and winning the John Fyfe Trophy, after scooping the Grace Dick Memorial Prize, the Aillie Cullen Memorial Prize, and the St Mungo Challenge Trophy.

It was right that this should be billed as a band effort as the strongest parts musically were in the arrangements, both vocal and instrumental, that brought Ruth Moody's songs, as it were, off the page.

Darlings of Classic FM, The Sixteen have made it part of their mission to perform and record the music of Palestrina, a composer whose perfectly honed counterpoint became the model for his contemporaries and successors (among whom was no less than JS Bach).

THIS should have been a clear-cut five-star concert.

It is no surprise that the Tolbooth, one of Scotland's priceless, small-scale treasures, should make Cedric Watson get over the strangeness, for him, of playing to a seated audience – and on a Saturday night, too.

Sparrow And The Workshop

COMPOSER and conductor Vincenzo Simmarano is in Scotland this weekend with a choir from Italy for performances of his own music and that of Antonio Vivaldi.

Filmmaker David Lynch may not have the high profile he once did, but he sure knows a muse when he sees and hears one.

EDINBURGH-BASED singer-songwriter Sharon King tours the Borders and Highlands and Islands next month with her group Reckless Angels and is offering young local musicians the chance to show their talents in 15-minute support slots.