Edited down from Hans Christian Anderson’s original by playwright Stuart Paterson, The Snow Queen was read with theatricality and passion by Siobhan Redmond, dressed in her sparkling white finery. But it is at the door of Scottish composer Savourna Stevenson that most plaudits must be laid. Her expansive score captured the essence of Anderson’s tale – the fear, tenderness, loyalty. Each step of the narrative journey was accompanied with just the right musical intent.
IN A telling aside during this Edinburgh International Harp Festival concert, having referred to her set-list’s spanning of numerous different genres, harpist/composer Savourna Stevenson wrinkled her nose and observed, “I don’t really like that word.”
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Billed as a mini-retrospective of her recording and composing career, right back to her 1985 debut album Tickled Pink, the programme certainly highlighted Stevenson’s fruitful lack of regard for genre divisions, especially now she’s working equally on the traditional clarsach and the classical pedal harp – a boundary-free approach, with a breadth and depth of technique to match, that underpins her status at the forefront of Scotland’s harp revival.
Traditional music remains a central wellspring of inspiration for her compositions, even if her innovative array of fingering methods and unorthodox keys or scales often transported these sources far beyond their roots – as in the eldritch atmosphere and dramatic colours of The Source, from her Tweed Journey suite, conjuring the tale of Thomas the Rhymer, and the vivid impressionism of Dawn, Earth, Wind and Water.
A clarsach-led first half, whose last couple of numbers featured Stevenson’s guitarist son [ Miles Norris ] , also wove in jazz and Latin influences.
Meanwhile, after the interval, the pedal harp took centre stage, primarily in her three-movement Harp Quintet, for which she was joined by the Edinburgh Quartet, in a beautifully intricate, bold yet delicate interlacing of different string timbres and textures, exploring and enriching the piece’s four core folk-song melodies.
LAUNCH REVIEWS
A new orchestral work with the grand title Misterstourworm and the Kelpie’s Gift was always likely to make a name for itself. Add the unusual setting of a large barn in the East Lothian countryside and a narrative by a Hollywood star, and the cheering response of 400 schoolchildren was no surprise.
The one-off performance by the Orchestra of Scottish Opera and the actor Billy Boyd at Skateraw farm demonstrated that there may be life yet in classical music.
Misterstourworm is a collaboration between Savourna Stevenson, the harpist and composer, and Stuart Paterson, the Fife-based playwright who, for more than 20 years, has adapted children’s myths and legends for the stage.
The work is the result of what Stevenson called a “life-changing” grant of £25,000 made by Creative Scotland in 2001.
It enabled the couple to create a tale set in a mythical Scotland in which a young hero embarks on a magical quest to free his people from a fearsome, fire-breathing sea monster, Misterstourworm.
Boyd, who played Peregrin “Pippin” Took in Peter Jackson’s feature-film adaptation of the J.R.R. Tolkien novel Lord of the Rings, has long been a friend of Paterson. The playwright gave him his big break in Scottish theatre by casting him as Arthur in a Christmas production of The Sword in the Stone. He said that he had been “flattered and delighted” to be asked to narrate the performance.
Stevenson and Paterson said they had been keen to create a work in the mould of Peter and the Wolf, and originally turned to the Greek myths for inspiration. “We wanted a story where we felt there was something underneath – it’s not all surface. But we also felt we had been given a grant to do something Scottish, we need to do something that felt like a real Scottish myth,” Mr Paterson said.
They fell on the tale of the stoorworm, which was said to have been as long as Scotland, and whose humps became the islands off the West Coast after its death. They added Kelpies, alluring and magical but deadly creatures, and set events in the fictitious land of Tiree.
The two had first worked together in 1986 on the writer’s reworking of Beauty and the Beast for the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh. “I wanted proper music for that, not rink-a-dink panto music, and she was perfect – Savourna is a delightfully talented composer, and she played it live.”
In that production, the music had been less important than the script, Ms Stevenson said. “Stuart always regarded the music as important to the show, but it inevitably gets squeezed out to the edge. In a piece of theatre it is secondary. Stuart and I always thought if I followed the story closely enough, we should be able to take the words away and the music would still hold up,” she added.
The success of the project can be measured by yesterday’s album release of the music, by Circular Records, a company established with assistance from the Scottish government’s Scottish Music Futures Fund, to help to protect musicians’ and composers’ intellectual property rights.
Mr Paterson has recently completed a screenplay entitled Master of Lies for the film director Nic Roeg, and hopes that a film may attract funding. However, before his work finally hits the big screen, Hansel and Gretel, a second orchestral collaboration between Stevenson and Paterson, will be premiered this Christmas.
The Scotsman
MORE than 400 excited East Lothian schoolchildren packed the large barn at Skateraw, East Lothian, for a short concert to launch the CD of Misterstourworm and the Kelpie’s Gift.
Composed by Savourna Stevenson to a text by playwright Stuart Paterson, this enchanting tale explores the heart of myth and legend as a young boy sets out to kill the terrifying monster, Misterstourworm, with the help of a Kelpie.
The story was told through a potent combination of music, from the Orchestra of Scottish Opera with conductor Derek Clark; lively narration by Lord of the Rings star Billy Boyd – who was cheered to the rafters by the children – and stunning projected illustrations by Martin McKenna.
Stevenson’s musical language is simple but beautifully crafted, as she spins a magical sound world of grisly deep-voiced monsters and tinkling fairies in a dramatic, fast-moving score that could have easily been longer.
Comparisons with the children’s much-loved classic, Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, are highly apt given that the youngsters were mesmerised by the performance. The short blast from the finale of Rossini’s William Tell Overture, which opened the concert had them whooping noisily and there were smiles of recognition as the orchestra played John Williams’s suite from Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
Johnny Watson’s barn at Skateraw proved to be a fabulous venue, with the images of Beuys, Kantor and other artists from Richard Demarco’s archive collection lining the walls to create a vivid backdrop.
Susan Nickalls
Evening News
AN EAST Lothian barn was the unlikely venue for a high-profile orchestral concert celebrating a great Scottish myth.
The barn at the Skateraw Foundation, near Dunbar, played host to the Orchestra of the Scottish Opera Production of Misterstourworm and the Kelpie’s Gift, which featured Hollywood sensation Billy Boyd as narrator.
The project, played out last night in front of 400 school children, featured the story of the monster as long as Scotland, whose humps created the west coast islands when he died.
Boyd, who starred in the film Lord of the Rings, said: “Misterstourworm and the Kelpie’s Gift is a magical and exciting tale for kids of all ages.”
Dunbar is set for a musical extravaganza on June 9 with the launch of a new classical orchestral work for youngsters
Misterstourworm and the Kelpie’s Gift will be presented to an audience of 400 East Lothian schoolchildren free-of-charge at the event, taking place in a huge barn at The Skateraw Foundation near the town.
Lord Of The Rings star Billy Boyd will narrate the 45-minute performance accompanied by the Orchestra of Scottish Opera.
He said: “Misterstourworm and the Kelpie’s Gift is a magical and exciting tale for kids of all ages.”
Avril Campbell
30 May 2008
The recording of the Savourna Stevenson/Stuart Paterson composition Misterstourworm and the Kelpie’s Gift was given an early sales boost on Saturday thanks to the Edinburgh area choir of the National Youth Choir of Scotland and its director Mark Evans.
As Mary Brennan writes in Herald Arts (Monday June 8), the disc is launched today at Skateraw in East Lothian with Billy Boyd narrating Paterson’s story, which Stevenson has scored. However the disc also features the girls of the Edinburgh NYCoS choir performing the three songs Stevenson wrote as one of ten composers invited to add to the NYCoS book for its tenth anniversary. One of the three, Waiting for the Silver-Sailed Moon, has already assumed classic status in the repertoire of youth choirs the length and breadth of the country, and the Edinburgh girls gave an un-programmed bonus performance of it at Saturday night’s end-of-session concert in St Cuthbert’s Church at the West End of Princes Street.
Although fighting for attention in a superb concert, it did have the bonus of being available for purchase at the interval, where an early supply of the discs joined the fund-raising tasty home-baking for sale. At the end of the concert there was but one solitary copy of Stevenson’s Stourworm disc left on the NYCoS stall.
Keith Bruce (The Herald Arts Blog)
THE SCOTSMAN • JIM GILCHRIST • THE ARCHES, GLASGOW ****
SAVOURNA Stevenson has developed an utterly distinctive and inventive harp sound, its Scottish roots infused with eclectic elements, resulting in lithe, jazz inflections or richly toned, impressionistic languor.
She was clearly delighted to be teaming up with two of the superb Marseilles-based Iranian percussionist family, the Chemiranis, and the results were frequently exhilarating. A lengthy percussion duet demonstrated the Chemiranis’ razor-sharp interaction and the multi-voiced chatter of their drums, before the ensemble, joined by double-bassist Brian Shiels and Gaelic singer Alyth McCormack, presented Persian Knight and Celtic Dawn, Stevenson’s settings of the words of the Lebanese poet and philosopher Kahlil Gibran (some of it translated into Gaelic by Aonghas MacNeacail).
These made for eloquent lyrics, sensitively set and beautifully sung by McCormack (with the ensemble joined briefly by a second harpist, June Naylor).
Other effective instrumental pieces included the raga-like Emily’s Calling, with a single drum whirring alongside the harp, and Stevenson’s stealthy chiming over thrumming drums and bass in Time.
This was frequently beguiling music, delicate and intricate as fretwork but, between the rumble of passing trains and the intrusively noisy crowd allowed into the adjoining space, the Arches wasn’t the best place to appreciate it. Was that a dramatic flourish of Iranian drumming, or just the 8:15 for Wemyss Bay?
review by SUSAN MANSFIELD – The Scotsman
SAVOURNA Stevenson boldly takes the clarsach where no clarsach has gone before. In her hands, the Celtic harp has voyaged into the territory of bluegrass banjos, sitar-style cascades, Indian ragas and African beats.
A concert at Celtic Connections will preview tracks from her forthcoming album, her ninth, which has a distinctly Middle Eastern flavour. But this is only one aspect of her work.
“Scotland’s most adventurously accomplished clarsach player”, as she has been called, has many other strings to her harp, from writing orchestral work, to having her music featured on Sex and the City.
Persian Knight Celtic Dawn – a typical Stevenson title, with a quirky twist of humour – features the playing of Iranian percussionists, the Chemiranis, and in particular the zarb, a drum played with the fingers which can produce as many different notes as a piano and is described by Stevenson as “mesmerising”.
Two of the Chemiranis will join Stevenson for her Celtic Connections gig at the Arches on Saturday.
They first met and played together at the Real World Festival. “I was doing an all-night live broadcast for Radio 3, and all the artists were listening to each other as we waited for our turn to play, appreciating each other’s music. Argentine accordionist Raoul Barbosa was there, the Chemiranis and myself, and we all just started playing together. It was a lovely impromptu playing experience.”
She promised the Chemiranis that when the right opportunity arose, they would collaborate. When Stevenson began to write songs for her new album, using text from ‘The Prophet’, by Lebanese writer Kahlil Gibran, she realised the time had come.
“The album will be very much a meeting of cultures from East and West,” she says. “The intricacy and ornament of Persian music is a little like Celtic music. I want the Chemiranis to bring some of their culture to it.”
She was reminded of the musical potential of ‘The Prophet’ in 2002 when she was asked to play at Peter Gabriel’s wedding “on a beach in Sardinia”, at which Gibran’s passage on marriage was one of the readings. She has now set that, along with two other passages, to music. Gibran’s ‘Joy and Sorrow’ has been translated into Gaelic by her brother-in-law, the poet Aonghas MacNeacail, and will be sung by Alyth McCormack.
“I love to hear the human voice on my records. Just as music is an international language, the words of Gibran speak to anybody and everybody. It’s full of wonderful messages and symbols, a book you keep on the shelf and dip into. And it’s so international, we all feel the same about marriage, children, friendship.”
Stevenson is also increasingly being recognised as a classical composer. In 2001, she received a Creative Scotland Award – “a life-changing experience” – to write an orchestral work for young people. The resulting symphonic piece, ‘Misterstourworm and the Kelpie’s Gift’ was performed to great acclaim in 2003, with the actor Billy Boyd as the narrator.
“It was so successful that Children’s Classic Concerts decided to commission another one, which was an absolute joy,” she says. Hansel and Gretel was performed this season by the Scottish Opera Orchestra to capacity crowds at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, and Usher Hall in Edinburgh, narrated by Taggart actress Blyth Duff, wearing “a fantastic pair of witchy shoes.”
It’s a challenge for Stevenson to switch between different types of music, one day composing for herself at the clarsach, the next sitting at a desk with a full orchestral score. “It’s a very different world to break into, but I think it’s a really healthy thing to be involved in so many different kinds of music”.
“I’ve had such a warm rea
ction to my music from the orchestral players, maybe there’s something new for them in the fact that I started out in traditional music, with the likes of Fairport Convention and Aly Bain, and have been involved in world music and jazz. Hansel and Gretel also has a strong East-European element.”
She is following in the footsteps of her father, the composer Ronald Stevenson, who peppered her early piano lessons with eclectic musical influences. “I’m very lucky to have been exposed to so many different types of music from very early on. My father was passionate about Lewis Psalm-singing, pibroch and jazz, as much as classical music, and he would talk to me about these things when he was teaching me the piano.”
However, of all the places her music has ventured, perhaps the most unexpected is on to the set of Sex and the City, where a recording of her string quintet was used for scenes such as Charlotte’s wedding.
“My record company phoned me up completely out of the blue and said, ‘Somebody wants to use your music for Sex and the City’. I was a bit shocked, but it certainly gave me a bit more street cred with my teenage son and his mates.”
SAVOURNA STEVENSON
Calman the Dove
Cooking Vinyl, *****
Specially commissioned, for performance in Iona Abbey, to commemorate the St Columba anniversary, Savourna Stevenson has delivered a musical gem that features not only her fluent, jazz-tinged harp but also the moody whistle and stunning uillean pipes of Davy Spillane and the edgy, gipsy-like fiddle of Anne Wood.
The thrilling bustle of the opening track, Calman the Wolf, with Spillane pouring out notes, gives way to the slow mesmeric beauty of The White Swan – a lovely track – and then some sparkling solo harp in An Buachaille before the three musicians settle into a sustained exploration of Stevenson’s varied themes, spattered with spicy Charlie Parkerish chord changes. Delightful stuff.