BBC SSO: Tectonics Glasgow 2024 (Saturday 4 May 2024)

Tectonics Glasgow 2024

Presented by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

Weekend Festival Pass:  £32 / £26 concession

Saturday Pass £22 / £16 concession

Sunday Pass  £22/ £16  concession

A limited number of advance passes are available for the Festival. They allow entry to all events across the two days and are the best way to save money. Passes are only available to buy until Friday 26 April 2024 and subject to availability. No refunds are available for partial use and passes are not transferrable.

Concessions are available to students, unemployed and registered disabled. Proof of status is required.

15.30, 16.30, 19.00 & 22.00 

Recital Room 

KATE ARMITAGE & CO. 

Multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Kate Armitage and her entourage perform six improvised pieces across the Tectonics weekend: “Common sense will not prevail”. Ticket reservation is required on the day. 

c.16.00 

Old Fruitmarket 

SARAH-JANE SUMMERS & JUHANI SILVOLA 

WITH BBC SSO 

The Spirit Multitude: 

Pt.1: Nay, that I do not know? 

Pt.2: Toothed to their tails. 

Norway-based duo Sarah-Jane Summers (fiddle) & Juhani Silvola (guitar) combine Scottish traditional music from the Highlands with influences from Scandinavian traditions and experimental music. Nominated for a Norwegian Grammy in 2021, Songlines described the duo as “absolute masters of their instruments” and selected each of their four albums as Top of the World. This work takes as its starting point a Highland folktale fragment about the ‘sluagh’ (or Spirit Multitude) which was believed to descend on the Western Highlands and the Hebrides in the wake of the West Wind. 

c.17.00 

Main Hall 

EIKO YAMADA 

Traces of Air (Kiseki気跡) 

Born and raised in Tokyo, recorder player, improviser and sound-worker Eiko Yamada has lived and worked in Germany since 1984. She has collaborated with visual artists, dancers and poets and, as a member of the Berlin-based group Ex Tempore, developed a type of music performance called ‘sound action’. In the time and space that Yamada shares with audiences, air becomes sound material by exploring, deepening and refining it using playing techniques developed by herself. This sound material then takes form in real time through the constant dialogue between Yamada and her instrument. Traces of air are left behind. 

c.17.40 

Old Fruitmarket 

Marlo De Lara & Euan Currie  

Baltimore-born Marlo De Lara works within the realms of sound performance, visual distraction and film. Previously under the moniker ‘marlo eggplant’, their work aims to blur the definitions of the (un)intentional and the myth of permanence. Edinburgh-based Euan Currie cut his teeth in the early noughties with the group Muscletusk, described as a “psychedelic clatter team’s leatherboy tape-dirt party” (Giant Tank). More recently, he’s taken his solo sound collage and electronics project - Dead Labour Process – across Europe, Canada and Japan. Their live improvisation will draw on voices, electronics and field recordings. Expect an exploration of the miniscule properties of sound blown to senseless proportions, a sonic palette of unknown origins bonded in wordless dialogue across cluttered tables. 

Elaine Mitchener’s set will follow immediately in the Old Fruitmarket. 

c.18.15 

Old Fruitmarket 

Elaine Mitchener 

Olly Wilson Sometimes (1976) 

Elaine Mitchener Amazing Grace [Reworked] trad. 

Elaine Mitchener Unknown Tongue II 

Elaine Mitchener, “the UK’s boldest operatic voice” (The Guardian), is an experimental vocalist, movement artist and composer whose work encompasses improvisation, contemporary music theatre and performance art. “Coming to see what I do, you don’t sit back,” Mitchener warns. Sometimes is an electronic work for tape and tenor by a truly original American compositional voice, Olly Wilson - a moving interpretation of the Black spiritual ‘Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child’. Mitchener reflects and responds to the circumstances which birthed the centuries-old hymn ‘Amazing Grace’ and its contemporary resonances. And in Unknown Tongue II, there’s an exploration of where Mitchener’s voice leads her and the dialogues it has with itself. 

c.19.00 

Scottish Music Centre 

Meet the Artists – Day 1 

Your chance to meet and hear about some of the artists and music performed in Day 1 of Tectonics, hosted by BBC Radio 3 presenter and writer Kate Molleson. 

c.20.00 

Main Hall 

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra 1 

Marc Yeats  a point in the landscape (World Premiere)  

Salvatore Sciarrino  Sei nuovi capricci e un saluto for violin solo (UK Premiere)  

interval break 

Mariam Rezaei /  Matthew Shlomowitz  6 scenes for turntables and orchestra (UK Premiere) 

Ilya Gringolts violin 

Mariam Rezaei turntables 

Ilan Volkov conductor 

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra 

Mariam Rezaei is a multi-award winning composer, turntablist and performer, creating music described as “high-velocity sonic surrealism’” (The Guardian). Alongside composer Matthew Shlomowitz, their co-created ‘6 scenes’ are a divine collision of lots of things they love with some allusions to conventions from opera and concerti. 

“A true master of expression and exactitude” (Bachtrack), violinist Ilya Gringolts is as comfortable with the great orchestral repertoire as he is seeking out new musical challenges. Just shy of 50 years after the first renowned series of Capricci by Salvatore Sciarrino, Gringolts takes on this fresh set by the great composer. And each orchestral player is a soloist in Marc Yeats’s timecode-supported polytemporal work, which fluctuates between states of perceptual obfuscation and clarity.