Let your fingers do the talking

Let your fingers do the talking

FAR from instructing their patrons to turn off their mobile phones, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra is inviting enthusiastic users of social media to get busy when it throws open the doors of Glasgow Royal Concert Hall this evening.

Tonight, supporters will witness the final rehearsal for music director Peter Oundjian's last concerts of the season, featuring Mahler's epic Symphony No8, the Symphony of a Thousand.

With eight soloists, each from a different Commonwealth nation, alongside the RSNO Chorus and the RSNO Junior Chorus, there will be plenty to tweet about on Twitter (@rsno, @rsnochorus, #Mahler).

Alternatively you will be able to tag it on Facebook if that is the sort of thing that winds your metronome.

The rehearsal runs for 6.30pm to 7.45pm tonight and the concerts are at the Usher Hall, Edinburgh on Friday and Glasgow Royal Concert Hall on Saturday at 7.30pm

l rsno.org.uk

Libertines to play Scots gig

THE Libertines, who flowered briefly at the start of the new millennium with music produced by Mick Jones of The Clash and Suede's Bernard Butler, have reformed for summer festival gigs in London and Spain - with a warm-up gig in Glasgow.

Frontmen Peter Doherty (of Babyshambles) and Carl Barat (Dirty Pretty Things) will be reunited with bassist John Hassall and drummer Gary Powell.

The group has now announced a warm-up date at Glasgow Barrowlands on June 29, which will be the first time the band will have played Scotland's palais de rock since March 2, 2004.

Tickets will go on sale tomorrow morning at 9am.

l gigsinscotland.com

Showcase programme

THE programme for this year's Made in Scotland showcase at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe was unveiled by Scottish Government Culture Secretary Fiona Hyslop in the roof garden of a swish capital hotel on Tuesday.

The initiative receives £590,000 from the Scottish Government's Edinburgh Festivals Expo Fund and provides an opportunity for promoters from outside Scotland to see work being created here with a view to its further life elsewhere.

Now encompassing music as well as theatre and dance, Made in Scotland is in its sixth year and in August 2014 embraces 29 companies and artists, many of whom will be familiar to readers of review coverage in The Herald. These include theatre and performance work by David Leddy, Caroline Bowditch and Amy and Rosana Cade, music by saxophonist Brian Molley, singer-songwriter Amy Duncan and chamber group Daniel's Beard.

It also includes dance by Scottish Dance Theatre and Barrowland Ballet, as well as a growing number of collaborations across artforms.

As Hyslop noted, the programme has become as valuable as a guide to quality in the vast Fringe programme for the general public as it is a sales brochure for further touring opportunities.

l madeinscotlandshowcase.com