Mother and son feature in pioneering concert

The Peeblesshire NewsMiles Smiles 02 website

A pioneering concert in Broughton Village Hall will showcase the talents of one of Peeblesshire’s most famous musicians – and it’s all for a good cause.

The concert on Saturday, May 17, features the combined talents of harp and clarsach virtuoso Savourna Stevenson and her son Miles Norris, who plays guitar and bass guitar.

The evening’s entertainment has been devised by Broughton mother Ingrid Campbell, whose son Dart is in Primary 1 at the local school.

Her hope is that this popular concert will help kick-start a range of other musical events and activities both in school and further afield.

“I would like to do something to help encourage a love of music in our local young children,” she said. “I hope that this concert will make some money which we can plough back into further music-making in the community.”

Savourna Stevenson has had a varied and brilliant career and is established as one of the most imaginative musicians in the Borders.

Her cross-cultural enthusiasm has led to collaboration with artists from the worlds of traditional, jazz, rock and world music, working with an impressive array of musicians including Aly Bain, Danny Thompson, the Bhundu Boys, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Miles & Sav 02 websiteNational Youth Choirs of Scotland, the Scottish Ensemble and Catrin Finch, former Royak Harpist to HRH the Prince of Wales.

Savourna has become famous as a pioneer composer for the clarsach, or Scottish harp, performing on groundbreaking instruments made by her husband Mark Norris in his Stobo workshop.

Her son is a talented guitarist and bassist. He spent two years in Germany working on music projects for people with special needsand also playing bass in the German reggae band Antofagasta.

Broughton Village Hall will be set up with a fully licensed bar and cafe tables for a varied programme ranging from early music, through traditional Scottish and Irish, bluegrass, jazz, Latin, and blues from the harp and guitar, including excerpts from Savourna’s celebrated ‘Tweed Journey’, commissioned in 1989 for the Borders Festival of Ballads & Legends…


The Snow Queen: Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Usher Hall, Edinburgh

Kelly Apter

Scotsman

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.


Savourna Stevenson & The Edinburgh Quartet, Merchiston

Sue Wilson

The Scotsman

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.


Savourna Stevenson with the Stirling NYCoS Choir, Dunblane Cathedral

Keith Bruce

The Herald

While the fact that the Scottish Ensemble and Catrin Finch were premiering Savourna Stevenson’s new harp concerto on the same weekend that the composer herself was out on the road was simply serendipitous, this programme itself was a joy of joined-up thinking. Stevenson has been one of the most-sung contributors to the National Youth Choirs of Scotland commissioning programme and the model of involving one of the area NYCoS choirs on the platform to accompany those songs could be replicated by local promoters across the country…The whole recital was beautifully coherent and an original journey reaching far beyond the Border river of the composer’s youth.


Scottish Ensemble with Catrin Finch, Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh

Ken Walton

Scotsman

No question about the influence of Debussy and Ravel on Savourna Stevenson’s Concerto for Pedal Harp, which received its first performance as part of last night’s Scottish Ensemble concert, featuring harpist Catrin Finch as soloist. More interestingly, Stevenson has cast her three-movement concerto in unashamedly romantic mode…besides the lush French-style harmonies and pulsating Spanish dance rhythms are luscious Mantovanian string flourishes and cooler, lustier reminiscences of Piazzola…a wonderfully busy piece, served up with extraordinary vitality and singeing warmth by Finch and the thick-set strings of the Ensemble.


Interview: Savourna Stevenson, harpist and composer

Stevenson is aiming to cover the whole harp gamut in one show

The influence of clarsach and harp player Savourna Stevenson – celebrating her 50th birthday with a Celtic Connections concert tonight– shows no sign of waning, discovers Sue Wilson

TAKING a break from rehearsals for her 50th birthday concert at Celtic Connections, harpist and composer Savourna Stevenson is the very embodiment of a woman happy in her work.

“If I could, I would just play the harp all day, every day, every waking hour – and possibly in my sleep, too,” she says. “Obviously I can’t: as it is, I often play to the point of, ‘Oh dear, I can’t straighten my fingers,’ or noticing I’ve got all these broken blood vessels in my wrists – but I just love it.”

Although she’s primarily known as the leading contemporary renaissance pioneer on Scotland’s oldest national instrument, the clarsach, the most immediate reason why Stevenson’s cup overfloweth is her rekindled love affair with the much bigger classical pedal harp. “I played it as a teenager, but for a long time after that, until maybe three or four years ago, pretty much all my work was on the clarsach – which pedal harpists tended to look down on in those days, though that’s all completely changed now. But as a composer, the pedal harp is like having a grand piano to work with: it’s just got so many more notes, and also pedal harpists are much keener for new material – the clarsach players all want to do their own thing.”

Stevenson has only herself to blame for this creative independence of spirit among her Scottish co-instrumentalists. Name any leading younger exponent – of whom there are plenty, such as Corrina Hewat, Catriona McKay, Fiona Rutherford and Ailie Robertson, all headlining elsewhere at Celtic Connections – and the chances are she’s taught them, or they’ll certainly cite her as a key inspiration.

“I first heard Savourna’s music on a cheap compilation called The Celtic Harp or some such, when I was about 14, and I just played it to death,” says Rutherford, whose New Voices commission premières at the festival on Sunday. “I just loved the way she has no genre boundaries, all the really inventive ways she uses the harp, and the way she combines it with other instruments. As a teacher, too, she was so inspiring and encouraging, particularly with my interest in composing as well; she really treats every student as a total individual, and will work with whatever style you want to pursue.”

“Savourna just keeps on raising the bar,” says Hewat, principal harp tutor at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, who performed in her own six-harp suite, The Oak and the Ivy, at in Glasgow last week, and who’d been playing for just six weeks when first taken under Stevenson’s wing at a fèis in Fort Augustus. “She’s incorporated influences from all over the world, she uses all the colours, textures and rhythms possible – and as long as she keeps doing that, everyone else in Scotland has to follow. She’s a total inspiration.” Both players, needless to say, will be at tonight’s gig – in fact, if you want to know the whereabouts of pretty much any Scottish harp player that night, established or aspiring, it’s a fair bet they’ll be in the City Halls.

The outset of Stevenson’s own musical journey involved a similarly full immersion in her milieu as she continues to practise. As the daughter of the great Scottish pianist and composer Ronald Stevenson, she too started out learning the piano, and was writing her own tunes from the age of five. “But I was also hearing just about every other kind of music around the house, with lots of different musicians visiting – everything from Gaelic psalm singing and mouth-music to modern jazz, stuff from all round the world. In fact, I used to have a game with my Dad called Journey Around the World, where we’d play duets in different modes from different countries. You just ate, slept and drank music in our house – there was no escape. I actually took up the harp to get away from my Dad – just in the sense that the piano was his instrument – but then he immediately started writing lots of music for the clarsach.”

Her subsequent landmark albums, such as Tweed Journey and Calman the Dove, saw Stevenson charting new territories in exploring her instrument’s capabilities, demolishing its douce, drawing room image in bold creative encounters between folk, jazz and world music. During the past decade, though, she’s been back working mainly in the classical realm – albeit one that’s progressed considerably in its attitude to other genres since she was young – composing for and performing with orchestras, chamber groups and choirs. Hence her return, too, to the pedal harp – which, she mentions as an aside, celebrated the bicentenary of its invention last year, Sebastian Erard’s revolutionary double-action mechanism having first opened up the instrument to chromaticism back in 1811.

“But even though I might be seen now as a contemporary classical composer, I don’t compose squeaky-gate music: I am always going to write accessibly,” she says firmly. “I get fed up with new music that doesn’t lift your spirits in some way. And the one emotion I never want to elicit in an audience is boredom.”

The birthday show’s centrepiece is a semi-première performance, with the Edinburgh Quartet, of Stevenson’s Harp Quintet – originally staged at Celtic Connections 2000, and now newly transcribed from the clarsach to the pedal harp, in the interim having been excerpted for the soundtracks of both Sex and the City and Ugly Betty. (“I’d never heard of either,” she confides, “but I did at last manage to impress my daughter.”)

The rest of the programme reunites her with that man she calls “probably my favourite collaborator of all”, double bass legend Danny Thompson, for a selection of favourite pieces ranging from Debussy and Granados, to originals variously inspired by Gershwin, Harpo Marx and kora maestro Toumani Diabaté. “Basically I want to cover the whole harp gamut in one show,” Stevenson says. If anyone can do it, she can.


OSO with NYCoS Choirs, Edinburgh Usher Hall

Keith Bruce

THE HERALD

There were few empty seats in the auditorium and absolutely none on stage for the celebration of the 15th anniversary of the National Youth Choirs of Scotland…as more than 600 young singers joined the Orchestra of Scottish Opera…Savourna Stevenson’s Waiting for the Silver Sailed Moon for the upper voices was again confirmed as the loveliest tune to have been created by the choral organisation’s commissioning work.


Misterstourworm And The Kelpie’s Gift

LAUNCH REVIEWS

Orchestra of Scottish Opera performs monster work by Savourna Stevenson and Stuart Paterson
The Times

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.

Mike Wade

Music review: Misterstourworm and the Kelpie’s Gift ****

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

No myth. . .Billy Boyd’s in the barn

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.”

Children to attend music launch
East Lothian News

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

BLOGS

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)


Misterstourworm And The Kelpie’s Gift

Misterstourworm And The Kelpie’s Gift ****
The ScotsmancdMisterstourworm

As a performer, Scottish harpist Savourna Stevenson crosses many musical boundaries. As a composer, that eclecticism informs a delicious little “musical adventure” called Misterstourworm and the Kelpie’s Gift, which she claims is the first such narrated piece since Prokefiev’s Peter and the Wolf. That’s debatable, but the bottom line is this: it is a delightful work, narrated here by actor Billy Boyd, sung by the National Youth Choir of Scotland Edinburgh branch and the RSNO Junior Chorus, with the Scottish Opera Orchestra under Christopher Bell’s direction. Add to that some other songs by Stevenson and a colourfully illustrated booklet, and the package is just the ticket for young children who like a good tale well told.

Kenneth Walton

Misterstourworm And The Kelpie’s Gift ****
The Herald

BILLING itself as the first narrated children’s symphony since Prokofiev’s Peter And The Wolf in 1936, this project is the result of a 2001 Creative Scotland award to Scottish harpist Savourna Stevenson. Also involved are playwright Stuart Paterson, the National Youth Choir of Scotland, the RSNO Junior Chorus, the Orchestra of Scottish Opera and Lord Of The Rings star Billy Boyd.
It’s a myth set in the Western Isles featuring a brave young man called Coran, who sets out to rid his land of vicious sea monster Misterstourworm. Boyd narrates, the choirs sing and a seven-movement orchestral suite also fits into the bargain.
The 40-minute CD won’t overtax the attention span of the average eight-year-old, but for a real thrill, there will be a live performance at the Skateraw Foundation, East Lothian, at 2.30pm tomorrow.

Misterstourworm and the Kelpie’s Gift
The List

Back in 2003, Billy Boyd was a well kent face in Scottish theatre but the world had yet to know his name. At that point, composer Savourna Stevenson and writer Stuart Paterson secured Boyd’s services to narrate their new orchestral project, Misterstourworm and the Kelpie’s Gift. A year later, Boyd’s performance in Lord of the Rings raised his profile considerably. But his commitment to this magical, yet relatively small-scale, Scottish project was not diminished. Not only did Boyd agree to record the Misterstourworm CD, but he’ll also appear at the launch concert at Skateraw, Dunbar on 9 June.
‘My only reservation was whether I could commit to the date,’ says Boyd. ‘Not for the recording, but the live show. To work your whole year around one day in June is difficult. But because I’ve been so involved in this from the start, I just thought I’m gonna do it, we’ll work it out.’ Beautifully packaged, with dramatic illustrations by Martin McKenna, the CD is a wonderful introduction to classical music for children of all ages. Based on the mythical tale of a brave young man who fights the vicious Stourworm, the story is bold and exciting.
‘You’ve got to tip your hat to Stuart,’ says Boyd. ‘Whatever medium you work in, whether it’s radio, film, whatever, if you’ve got the right words to say it becomes a lot easier. Good writing should always be your starting point and then you add to it what you can.’ Stevenson’s score is a sweeping, dramatic affair which plunges from gentle melodies into moments of fast-paced intensity. With Boyd’s narration matching her music all the way.
‘I just loved it,’ says Boyd of his recording experience. ‘I had my headphones on and was loving the music, and just got carried away with the story, it’s so exciting.’

Kelly Aptor

Misterstourworm and the Kelpie’s Gift – CD review
Bachtrack (www.bachtrack.com)

For the past 70 years the most recent music and narrative composed specifically for children was Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf in 1936 written for his own children. Finally there is something new and modern for children to listen to, which might just open the world of classical music for them. Misterstourworm and the Kelpie’s Gift is a very exciting recording of a work composed by Savourna Stevenson in 2003 and performed once that year. It brings together the Orchestra of Scottish Opera with narrative by Stuart Paterson and offers a blend of sweetness and darkness that turn the best fairy tales into favourites. Flute and harp create a magical harmony evoking faeries and stardust, while the frightening power of the monster come through strongly through the deep brass instruments.
Actor Billy Boyd (Pippin in Lord of the Rings) narrates the tale beautifully, heightening the tension of the fight between good and evil. His words come across clearly, at just the right level to enable listeners to enjoy both the story and the music. The CD first offers the narrative version of the tale, then the music without the words. The little book, into which the CD is cleverly fitted, provides the story, beautifully illustrated, so children can read it for themselves while the music is playing.
There are a bonus three songs on the CD, including a lullaby, and a wonderful, powerful song “Bullies” which reworks the nursery rhyme “Mary, Mary” to tremendous effect.
When my 13 year old daughter heard Misterstourworm and the Kelpie’s Gift for the first time, she was transfixed by the connection between narrative and music.
This is a treat for everyone to enjoy, and the most wonderful part is that the music grows on you, the more you hear it. The story also comes through more clearly when you get to know the music, so I recommend you listen to it several times over a few weeks, to turn it into a family favourite. It provides a glorious experience for children and grown ups alike.

Jeremy Nicholas

The Gramophone 2007

Savourna Stevenson should be rightly proud of this vivid and atmospheric score with its network of themes and motifs that develop with the story. It works as an independent piece without the narration and indeed is heard as such at the end of the CD after three Stevenson songs performed by two Scottish youth choirs. Billy Boyd ( Pippin in Lord of the Rings ) is the excellent derring-do narrator … conductor Christopher Bell does it proud, as does the engineer …


Savourna Stevenson & The Chemiranis

THE SCOTSMAN • JIM GILCHRIST •  THE ARCHES, GLASGOW ****

chemiraniBlueDrum 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).

chemiraniDjamchidThese 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?