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The Cumnock Tryst Tenth Birthday Gala Concert
5 October 2024
Part of The Cumnock Tryst Festival 2024
Contemporary Music And Performance
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All the Hills and Vales Along
The main work in this concert is All the Hills and Vales Along which James MacMillan composed for the 2018 Cumnock Tryst festival to mark the centenary of the WW1 Armistice. This is an oratorio based on poems by Scotsman Charles Hamilton Sorley who was killed at the Battle of Loos in 1915.
The concert also has the world premiere of two new works by Gillian Walker and Erin Thomson, settings for chamber choir and solo brass, of poems written during the Tryst’s lockdown phase of our A Musical Celebration of the Coalfields project by Irene Howat and Aileen Wood. The Maxwell Quartet perform some of their distinctive Scottish folk music arrangements and the Dalmellington Band kick it all off in a similarly traditional fashion.
Barony Hall, Barony Campus
Runtime: 60 mins, no interval.
Price: £7 – £26
Joshua Ellicott tenor
The Cumnock Tryst Festival Chorus with Ayr Choral Union
Choral Octet from The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland
Dalmellington Band
Maxwell Quartet
Nikita Naumov double bass
Rebecca Wilson flugelhorn and trumpet
Eamonn Dougan, Andrew Duncan, James MacMillan Conductors
Andrew Duncan March from Knockshinnoch
Etienne Crausaz Balkan Dances
Andrew Duncan
A New World Overture
Scottish Folk Songs arranged by Maxwell Quartet
Gillian Walker
Wearit bi herd lawbor,
Folk creepit tae bed an slept (World Premiere)
Erin Thomson On Green Hill (World Premiere)
James MacMillan All the Hills and Vales Along
“It has always been my vision to bring our local ensembles together to perform with our starry international visitors. I wrote my big oratorio All The Hills and Vales Along to do precisely this in 2018. I’m delighted to bring it back for our tenth anniversary celebrations this year.
Dalmellington Band is one of the top brass bands in the land and our Festival Chorus is going from strength to strength under the guidance of Eamonn Dougan and Andrew McTaggart. It’s a great delight to incorporate our friends in the Ayr Choral Union into this joint collaboration. And to work in our guest performers this year (tenor Joshua Ellicott and the Maxwell Quartet) is especially exciting. AND we have commissioned new choral music from two up-and-coming young Scottish composers!
These will be performed by the wonderful young singers from the RCS who have also been involved with the Tryst in an ongoing mentoring project. A lot is packed into this short concert!”
Sir James MacMillan