The University of Aberdeen Symphony and String Orchestras will join forces with a host of the city’s musical groups this weekend in an ambitious musical line-up that features two world premieres.
The concert, entitled Extremities, is part of North East Scotland’s contemporary music festival, sound. It will feature music from the Bon Accord Silver Band who will team up with young musicians from local schools, and a huge group of local accordionists, saxophonists and percussionists!
These local bands and musicians have linked up to bring a concert with a contemporary Cornish feel to the North East of Scotland. For this unusual event, talented UK composer Graham Fitkin, who will travel to Aberdeen from Cornwall, will work all day on Sunday (November 19) with the musicians to prepare for the world premiere of his Ring Cycle for massed ensembles to be performed at the Music Hall on Sunday evening at 7.30pm.
In tune with the Cornish theme for the evening the University Symphony Orchestra, directed by Chris Cadwur James, who is a music lecturer at the University of Aberdeen, will give performances of Malcolm Arnold’s ever-popular Four Cornish Dances and Arnold Bax's epic tone poem Tintagel.
Under the baton of Dr Pete Stollery, Head of Music at Aberdeen University, the String Orchestra will give the first performance of Furv by SPNM shortlisted composer Chris Cadwur James.
Furv, which is the Cornish word for ‘Shape’, is cast as a single-movement work in which the main body of the string orchestra is pitted against solo violin and cello breaks played by Natalie Vanballenberghe and Rachel Lind. Pete Stollery also directs Graham Fitkin's Slow, in which the String Orchestra is joined by Ruth Wall and the composer himself on keyboards.
Tickets for Sunday’s concert at the Music Hall are priced at £7.50 standard, £5.00 concession, and £2.50 for children and are available from Aberdeen Box Office on 01224 641122 or online at www.abdnboxoffice.com or at the door until sold out.
Further information on concerts at the University of Aberdeen is available by logging on to: www.abdn.ac.uk/universitymusic