Performance

Citizens of Everywhere!

George Square, Glasgow

Keith Bruce

THE FEW who braved the inclemency – and yes, it rained, but it was neither cold nor torrential – witnessed a very special collaboration in George Square, and one that certainly deserved a larger audience. What was striking was how it played to the strengths of everyone involved to make something unique and specific to the city.

Artist Douglas Gordon, he of the 24 hour Psycho and Zidane, had sourced a film of singer and human rights activist Paul Robeson leading the May Day parade from the city centre to Queen’s Park in 1960, which was screened with live commentary in the form of a specially-commissioned narrative poem from Scotland’s Makar Jackie Kay. Emotive as the images were, her words were brilliantly synchronised to them, recording the banner of the Springburn Socialist Sunday School, placards demanding Playing Fields not Battlefields, and the guest of honour tipping his hat to well-wishers on the way, as well as building in a wealth of other amusing cross-cultural references like “Sunday in the Park with Paul”.

From there singer Suzanne Bonnar improvised an a capella version of Robeson’s Showboat hit Ol’ Man River, which she would reprise later with orchestral accompaniment, as a bridge to the RSNO playing Alex MacKay’s arrangement of a work Gordon commissioned from rock band Mogwai for an arts installation in Germany, entitled Music for a Forgotten Future: The Singing Mountain.

The geographical tour of Europe continued with the orchestra under conductor Jean-Claude Picard and composers Mendelssohn, Beethoven, MacCunn, Grieg, and Smetana in what was a beautifully constructed programme to launch Glasgow’s hosting – in partnership with Berlin, where Gordon now lives – of the European Championships. For the earlier part of the performance pursuit cycling from the velodrome a few miles to the East played on another screen in the square as a reminder of that link.

One could imagine a day when – regardless of the weather – this concert and its preceding live art work would have been a sensational opening event for Glasgow’s Mayfest festival. As it was, and although the rain will undoubtedly be made the scapegoat by those who commissioned it, this was a criminally undersold event with an attendance that ill-served the talented people who made it.