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When Mountains Meet on tour

The Scotland-wide tour of When Mountains Meet is now under way, with performances in Edinburgh and Lerwick already getting an enthusiastic reception from sell-out audiences. An extra date has been added at the end of the tour in Paisley,  on 31 May: the full tour list is below, just click on the venue name for booking links.

Here’s a taster of what people have been saying about the show:

Photo: Robin Mitchell

“raw, alive and thoroughly accessible, driven by the presence of live musicians… a roaring success, full of vigour, colour and music” (All Edinburgh Theatre). “The atmosphere of a cross cultural ceilidh fills the room.” (Herald Scotland) “The show’s superb musical credentials pay off from the start…the celebratory atmosphere never falters, and the story remains clear from start to end.” (Quintessential Review)

 

 

 

 

STV News featured an interview with Anne Wood, with Rick’s percussion as backdrop, on their “What’s On Scotland” slot. You can catch up on the interview on the Where Mountains Meet Facebook page.

 

If you can’t make it up to any of the performances, you can still enjoy the music. The Where Mountains Meet CD is now available to listen, buy or download on Bandcamp.

 

 

 

 

But of course, it’s best experienced in person!

The remaining tour dates are:

Aberdeen, Saturday 4 and Sunday 5 May

The Lemon Tree (Rise Up Festival): Box office: 01224 641122

Ullapool, Friday 10 and Saturday 11 May

MacPhail Centre (Ulluminate): Box office: 01854 613336

 

Stirling, Wednesday 15 May

The Albert Halls: Box office: 01786 473544

Crieff, Friday 17 May

Strathearn Arts: Box office: 01764 655556

​Glasgow, Tuesday 21 and Wednesday 22 May

Cottiers​: Box office: 0141 357 5825

Castle Douglas, Saturday 25 May

Town Hall: Box office: 030 33 33 3000

 

Melrose, Tuesday 28 May

Corn Exchange: Box office: 01896 822463

Paisley,  Friday 31 May

Paisley Arts Centre: Box office: 0300 300 0250

Scottish International Storytelling Festival

When Mountains Meet – Jub Milain Pahaar

Rick is this week and next intensely absorbed in rehearsal and preparations for the first full work-in-progress performances of When Mountains Meet/ Jub Milain Pahaar. Featured as part of “Keeping it Lit”, the 2022 Scottish International Storytelling Festival, the performances will take place in Edinburgh at Assembly Roxy on 27 and 28 October. Booking details are on our Events pages.

Gig theatre, storytelling, Scottish/South Asian influenced music and striking visual images combine to recount the adventures of Anne Wood as she leaves Edinburgh for an unforgettable voyage through Pakistan.

“My mother is Scottish. My father was Pakistani. In my early twenties I found the father I had never met … but I was taboo in a culture to which I longed to belong.”

Inspired by Anne’s true story and 75 years after the creation of Pakistan, a live band plus storytellers and singers celebrate cultural diversity and difference in this tender, surprising and heart-opening show, summoning majestic mountains, mesmerising sounds and mouth-watering tastes.

The atmosphere will be relaxed and accessible, with performances either audio described or with BSL interpretation. The team will be hosting a short, facilitated feedback session after both performances to which all are welcome.

 

The production is funded by Creative Scotland. For more information about the project, click here.

A Slave to the Rhythm – Part 7

The seventh in an occasional series from Rick about his life as a musician – where it all started and what it has come to now

Learning styles and serving the story

My recent associations with Indian musicians happened in a sequence of visits I had made to India to continue my earlier study of the chenda drum. I had certainly made some progress and had moved to be under the masterful tutorage of Mattanur Shankaran Marar. He was generally recognised to be the top man in his field. Indeed, after a collaboration on an Indian film, Zakir Hussain, himself rated as the best tabla player of his generation, called Shankaran ‘a master of rhythm’. Clearly, to be studying with Shankaran was the chance of a lifetime.

I spent a lot of time, living in his house, travelling with him to performances and studying in the early morning. His masterful grasp of rhythm was more than impressive and he was also a very patient and humble individual who never tired of demonstrating and trying to share the intricacies of his art to me. Musicians take for granted the notions of doubling the speed of something, doubling again and maybe even again. It takes a sideways train of thought though to think what it might be to increase speeds by 1 ½ and 2 ½ times !  Rhythm becomes more of a science, or at least applied mathematics, in the Indian classical and related models. I was able to put my own new found knowledge directly to task in the workshop and performance projects I undertook with the Academy of Indian Dance in London. This solidified basic groundwork although I never aspired to be a great chenda player. My purpose in study was to enlarge both my concept of rhythm and my ability to incorporate new elements into my own music making.

Over the next couple of years in the UK (2006 /7), I became involved in various outdoor, site-specific events. They were always unique. The one that sticks in my mind was at Hambledon Hill in Dorset. It was the work of the Red Earth Company and involved horn players, drummers, a Butoh dancer and a lot of fire. An audience numbering many hundreds were guided up the hillside of an iron age hill fort, encountering little events on the way, until they came above the low clouds to witness a rhythmic ritual drama of movement culminating in the passing through a fire gate. I remember being very wet at the end of a rainy day but also very uplifted by the magic of the spectacle.

Helen East & Rick Wilson

Throughout all these various experiences, I was regularly working with Helen in our day to day business of storytelling and music. Whether working in education or otherwise, with both children and adults, we had developed a very instinctive style of rapport. This enabled me to, musically, almost pre-empt dramatic shifts in the story as well as solidify the current narrative.

I had expanded my instrumentation in this context to include a couple of zithers that could be tuned to reflect an almost-global range of scales, modes and sounds. We famously undertook a 9 week tour of schools and educational establishments in 5 south American countries which stretched both our working repertory and our physical endurance !

I had also started to work with storyteller Hugh Lupton on his telling of the epic Beowulf. Originally, he asked me to use just metallic instruments but very quickly came around to the benefits of using a much wider range of tone colours. Although very much a fixed show, I still had room for innovative inspirations as well as a solo feature. The previously mentioned idea of almost pre-empting the narrative continues to be a dynamic feature of this performance as it can subtly guide the listener ahead of the spoken word.

I will always be trying to develop this particular skill further and further as I believe it gives a narrative another special dimension.

Spending much more time on the borders of Shropshire and the Welsh Marches, I joined The Street Band, based locally. Originally conceived as a more of a large outdoor and celebratory ensemble, it encompassed mostly dance style music from Latin America, south and west Africa and the Caribbean. I had to learn a variety of different drumming styles and lock into the other rhythmic parts played by the other two percussionists. I fashioned a set up around the bass tones of the large Brazilian surdo drum with some extra bits and pieces. It was the first time that I had been in a band that, on a good gig, got the whole room dancing. That certainly felt good.

After Offa: living life along the border

After Offa is an oral heritage project about community, story and landscape, between Chirk Castle, Bronygarth and Sycharth, Llansilin.

The project, set up by Bronygarth Social Committee and directed by Helen,  ran from 2010 to 2012. It was funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and Shropshire County Council.  Workshops with schools and local groups, community events and interviews with local people generated a wealth of stories, songs and photographs. Working with Sarah Anderson and Simon Greaves, Helen edited and published this material in the “After Offa” book and map and a CD entitled “Border Talk”, and brought it to life in a series of storywalks.

                                 

“We can tell from the Iron Age hill forts, menhirs and cairns in this area that it has been occupied for thousands of years…It has been fought over, hunted on, carved out, farmed, quarried, built upon and walked over by generation after generation.

“…the everyday experience of people who have lived and worked close to the land, taking part in activities that have helped to shape it, and the deep knowledge of the local landscape that arises out of this, usually only survive through oral tradition. Where this thread is broken, that history is lost.

“The After Offa project has been more than lucky in the huge number of local people who have shared this oral heritage. Their generosity in passing on family and personal stories, songs and reminiscences, lets new generations, and newcomers too, see an inside view, and feel a sense of place.”

Click here to view the After Offa map.  For more photos from the project visit http://www.aqueducks.org/aowalks.html.  All material from the project is held in the archives of Shropshire County Council.

Tales of trees on Offa’s Dyke. Photo Ali Quarrell

Storytelling and Oracy

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