THE Music at Paxton Festival has launched its 2019 festival programme, the first at the helm for new artistic director Angus Smith.
It sees the appointment of the Maxwell Quartet as the Music at Paxton Associate Ensemble, from 2019 to 2021.
The festival takes place in Paxton House on the banks of the Tweed in the Borders from 19 to 28 July.
The Maxwell Quartet said: “We are overjoyed to be beginning a really special musical journey with Music at Paxton this year.
"When we first came to the festival in 2018, we found it to be such an inspiring place to make music.
"There is something very special about the warmth of the audiences, the clarity of the acoustics and the ambience and history of the house and surrounding area. We have so many exciting ideas about what we might get up to at Music at Paxton in the coming years, from ground-breaking programming, to exciting new collaborations and bringing together classical and folk music repertoire.”
This year’s featured artists include pianist Paul Lewis, violinist Tasmin Little, soprano Louise Alder, the critically-acclaimed Leonore Piano Trio, Albion String Quartet and pianist Pavel Kolesnikov, among others.
www.musicatpaxton.co.uk
A NEW exhibition is launched at Platform in Easterhouse, later this month, called Timefield, an installation created by six artists.
Timefield opens on 27 April as part of Outskirts Festival and runs until 25 May.
It is described as "an exploration of the passage of time and its effect on the landscape of our bodies and our planet."
It has been developed by artists Ian Cameron, Kate Clayton, Frank McElhinney, Annie Peel, Lesley Wilson and John Wills.
It includes projections of long exposure photographs showing the impact of time on the body, large scale painted wall-hangings that communicate the force of nature, and a soundscape that integrates spoken word and sound drawn from the natural world.
www.platform-online.co.uk
GUITARIST and composer Graeme Stephen reprises his acclaimed multi-media presentation Letters for Peace at St James Scottish Episcopal Church in Leith on Friday (12 April) and at St Peter’s Church in Linlithgow on 26 April.
Aberdeen-born, Edinburgh-based Stephen wrote Letters for Peace, which he performed as part of the Made in Scotland strand of the Edinburgh Fringe last August, after coming across a book about First World War conscientious objectors while on tour in Wales.
“I found the stories of these people really moving,” says Stephen, who is one of the founders of the award-winning Playtime jazz sessions in Edinburgh and has made a speciality of creating new soundtracks to classic silent films. “They were vilified at the time but the terrible statistics of that so-called war to end all wars made their stance all the braver and more principled to me.”
Stephen wrote Letters for Peace for guitar and string trio. It also features the voice of Stephen’s wife, the Romanian singer-songwriter Lizabett Russo as well as photos and words which are projected on an overhead screen. Following its Fringe 2018 premiere it went on to further acclaim at the annual Sound festival in Aberdeen in October.
www.graemestephen.net
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