A very early train brought fiddler Duncan Chisholm to Edinburgh on Saturday morning to receive one of this week's Bank of Scotland Herald Angels, as the creator of the multi-media traditional music experience, Kin, made a special return trip to the capital.
Chisholm had brought his show, which combines original video of Scotland and interviews with traditional musicians with live music from his trio, to the Acoustic Music Centre at St Brides for the Fringe. On Friday, however, he was playing on Black Isle, in a session that did not end until 5.30am, which left him just time to get to Inverness for the journey south. He was presented with an Angel by Les Dennis, who has been appearing in the Assembly Rooms in Tony Staveacre's play Jigsy, set backstage in a north of England working-men's club, which looks back over the career of a stand-up comic; and Karen Tighe, sponsorship manager for the Bank of Scotland, in her first post-Olympics duty.
The other Fringe Angel winner was A Tapestry of Many Threads, a musical show set in and about The Dovecot Studios, the collection of tapestries there and the building it now occupies in the former Infirmary Street baths. Written by Tom Cunningham and Alexander McCall Smith and sung by Beth Mackay and Andrew McTaggart, like Kin it will have more performances further afield. Only hours before the venue hosted the Fosters Edinburgh Comedy Awards, the Angel was received by the Dovecot's David Weir and the composer, Tom Cunningham.
The Edinburgh International Festival garnered four Bank of Scotland Herald Angels this week, three of them for performers who have now left the city. Angels for Ballet Preljocaj, Romanian theatre director Silviu Purcarete for his adaptation of Gulliver's Travels with Irish composer Shaun Davey, and soprano Christiane Karg who stepped in to replace Rebeccas Evans with a beautifully sequenced recital at the Queen's Hall, were collected by festival staff members Jackie Westbrook, Christopher Wynn and Susie Burnet on behalf of the artists.
The fourth Angel went to Irish singer Camille O'Sullivan, a Fringe favourite who is making her debut in the International Festival programme this year with her staging, and singing, of Shakespeare's epic poem The Rape of Lucrece with pianist and co-composer Feargal Murray in a Royal Shakespeare Company production directed by Elizabeth Freestone. She collected the award immediately before appearing at The Hub in conversation with the BBC's Stephen Duffy. The run of the show ended at the Royal Lyceum last night and this week she launches her new album, Changeling in London.
The week's Archangel and Little Devil awards both went to shows at Summerhall and were collected by the venue's owner, Robert McDowell, and artistic director Rupert Thomson. Accepting the Archangel on behalf of Poland's Song of the Goat theatre company, who had left for home around the same time as Chisholm was finishing his gig, McDowell revealed that the follow-up to the company's Song's of Lear show will be researched and created in Scotland, and use medieval Scottish music.
Thomson told the tale of Cadillac, by Poland's Usta Usta Republika, which could not be performed in the courtyard as planned because of licensing restrictions, but which went ahead after the band were relocated to Summerhall pub and the soundtrack was allowed to leak into the performing area by an open window.www.herald-events.com/heraldangels/
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