Latest news with #Tradfest
The National
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The National
Skerryvore mark 20 years with Floors Castle gig and new music for global fans
All eight members will be there to celebrate the famed trad band's monumental 20-year anniversary, seven studio albums, four continent tours, three Scotland's Live Act of the Year awards and their unique fusion of folk, trad, pop and rock. The band has doubled in size over two decades, with the four original members – Alec Dalglish, Fraser West and the Gillespie brothers, Daniel and Martin – meeting in Tiree before setting up a base in Glasgow while at university. READ MORE: Kathleen MacInnes captures magic of Tradfest in live album recording Playing pub sessions and small venues across the Highlands in 2003, they went on to leaving dos and weddings in Glasgow, picking up four more members over the decades – Craig Espie, Alan Scobie, Jodie Bremaneson and Scott Wood. Elspie joined in 2006 as fiddler. He shared with The National the early days of the band, the gradual realisation their passion could become a full-time job, pressures of the genres and the future of the band … 'It was alien to us; we played for a purpose, we were a ceilidh band, and that purpose was for people dancing," Elspie shared. 'The realisation that actually we can get away with this – we can play music and people don't want to just dance but listen to us. 'It was a big shift for us. It was quite the moment for the young men who had never actually set out to create a band." The four original members teamed up to play a ceilidh in Livingston for a former head teacher's retirement, and before they knew it, they had packed their bags for a tour that summer and it kept snowballing. Now, their songs have had millions of streams online. Spotify statistics show only two Scottish cities in their top five most streamed areas, with London taking the number one spot. Saturday's gig will be a cathartic experience for the band, having already planned a castle concert five years ago which never came to fruition. Amid their planned celebrations for their 15-year anniversary, the pandemic hit. Tickets had been sold for Inveraray Castle, and disappointment after a streak of constant, long tours meant it was one of the most challenging times for the band, Elspie explained. He said: 'We were all quite tired. When Covid came around and we all had a break, that actually helped us a lot. "Now, looking back, it seems like a lifesaver, genuinely." Members were able to take stock, recalibrate and put in a plan for the future, to make the band sustainable, and bring it back to the core of the music. 'We are literally just brothers' Elspie shared they had 'been very lucky' in how the band blends together with all their individual passion and skills, creating such a well-oiled machine, adding that: 'We are literally all just like brothers. 'We're very lucky – we do our own graphics, social media, accounts. We're very in-house on the business side of things as well as the creative side, which is very important. 'We certainly wouldn't have been able to afford to get to the stage we're at now if we had to employ people for every single thing outside of the music. Skerryvore's first album launch in 2005 / The band en route home from the US (Image: Skerryvore) His top tip for younger bands? 'It's important to have skills that you can transfer in. It'd be lovely if you didn't need to. But realistically that's what works.' Floors Castle is set to welcome 7000 fans to their grounds on Saturday night, and one of the key reasons to choose the Borders location was 'there would be a lot of people'. Fans are expected from the US, Canada and throughout the UK and Scotland. They can look forward to the first live performance of the band's new single, which is being released on Friday – as well as their greatest hits. Elspie went on: 'We didn't want to just do it in Glasgow or in the city – we wanted to do somewhere that showcased a bit of the history of Scotland, somewhere outdoors that you can see a bit of landscape. READ MORE: Inside the Highland trad music school celebrating 25 years of talent 'We looked at different castles, different outdoor gigs, and Floors is just a stunning location. 'When you're able to offer castle gigs, you're not really at the castle, you're in a field near the castle – but we can set up this location up so the backdrop of the show is the castle. That seemed like the perfect setting for the people who are going.' Elspie is referring to the band's international audience. Just back from a tour of Australia, the fiddler said he was surprised by how many knew the band's material: 'If we thought about it in hindsight, it makes sense because there are so many expats out there. But we were all surprised just how many knew our songs.' Having a global audience, Elspie shared that he and the band 'feel as if we're ambassadors' with pressure put on themselves to stay true to Scottish roots. 'We always want to evolve and grow and we want to create our own sound, but at the same time, we definitely want to keep our roots and still have the Scottish heritage. 'As we evolve, we've realised that, as so many other bands are doing now. Gone are the days where a band has to just be drums, bass, guitars, vocals. You can use the bagpipes or the fiddle or the accordion. You can use all these instruments in any kind of music. The band at HebCelt'There are bands out there doing dance or electro music that have these instruments. You've got rock bands using them, and ones that are more pop. So, we have a certain instrumentation that is obviously Scottish in its roots, and so just using these instruments and our own influences musically creates that sound. 'We've got 100 different tracks that probably all sound quite different, so it's trying to find the sound that's the way we think that we sound but also trying to hold that and look forward to what's next.' He added: 'I think we put pressure on ourselves, but we definitely feel as if we're ambassadors. When we go to other countries, we definitely feel like we represent Scotland.' What's next for Skerryvore? Elspie said that although he has had some fantastic moments with the band, there are still so many bucket-list moments to tick off: 'We're doing Glastonbury this year, which is a huge one – finally getting there. We'd love to do a concert with an orchestra at some point. 'We'd love to tour countries we've never been to. We've been talking about going to Japan. There's lots we'd love to do.' When pressed on any collaborations, he wouldn't share, but teased there were some conversations being had with some of the biggest names in Scottish trad in between studio time working on their new album. When asked what song out of the dozens released was most meaningful for Elspie, he shared without missing a beat: 'We recorded a song for the last album called Good Things Never Die. 'The video we did for it was just clips of all our families and friends — some who are still with us, some who are not. So that's always a very emotional piece to play and one of my favourites.'
The National
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The National
Review: Matthew Bourne's swans are still flying high
Thanks to its brilliantly bold re-envisioning of the piece – complete with a bevy of glorious and dynamic male swans – the choreography has, deservedly, achieved the status of a classic of modern ballet. The basis of the show's extraordinary success is that it is a ballet constructed from the ground upwards. Of course it keeps Tchaikovsky's magnificent score – and it maintains structural elements of the famous 1895 choreography by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov – but Bourne's choreography is a work of startling originality. From the moment that The Prince is visited in his dreams by a beautiful male swan, we know that we are encountering what was, in 1995, a distinctively new version of the ballet. As in Tchaikovsky's original, The Prince is condemned by his officious mother to select a bride at the forthcoming royal ball. However, in Bourne's choreography, the protagonist's aversion to these arranged nuptials is connected boldly and humorously to the ballet's homo-erotic dimension. In an early scene, for instance, the Prince is observably captivated by an exquisite male nude sculpture (which is represented, back to the audience, by a real-life performer standing on a wheeled dolly). The show sparks constantly with such imaginative innovations, which are assisted always by stunning set and costume designs by Lez Brotherston. One dare not take one's eyes off the show for a moment, lest one miss some delightful detail. The Prince (played with an appropriate sense of distractedness on opening night in Edinburgh by Leonardo McCorkindale) finds himself saddled with the dreadful Sloane known only as The Girlfriend. She, in turn, was danced with marvellous hyper-activity and vulgarity in Edinburgh by Bryony Wood. Brotherston's design work comes into its own when the action shifts to a disreputable nightclub up a backstreet in the Soho district of London. Here, the clubbers come and go in a dazzling array of costumes, while video designer Duncan McLean's projection of a huge, painted advert for Swan Vestas safety matches takes glorious flight. READ MORE: Kathleen MacInnes captures magic of Tradfest in live album recording The great, pioneering German choreographer Pina Bausch famously relegated the significance of traditional pointe ballet shoes. Bourne dispenses with them entirely. Nonetheless, there is a sense in which – in its impressive solo dances, pas de deux and ensemble dances – Bourne's choreography bridges the space between traditional ballet and contemporary dance. Like much great art, this Swan Lake is simultaneously robust and poetic. The ballroom scene towards the end of the ballet is a case in point. The character of The Stranger (danced in Edinburgh with an undeniable, testosterone-fuelled swagger by a leather-clad Rory Macleod) rolls together the characters of the sorcerer Rothbart and his daughter Odile. Here – as The Stranger seduces everyone in the room, including both The Prince and his mother, The Queen – the universal eroticism of Bourne's choreography charts a direct course into the tragic heart of Tchaikovsky's ballet. At His Majesty's Theatre, Aberdeen, May 28-31; and Theatre Royal, Glasgow, June 3-7:
The National
27-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The National
Scottish-Palestinian poet Nada Shawa on importance of speaking out
'I was invited to participate in this panel last year. And I'm delighted to be invited.' Shawa is a Scottish-Palestinian poet, with her most recent poetry collection reviewed in this paper in October by Alan Riach. This year, she's excited to be part of Edinburgh's Tradfest, presenting the Palestinian film Fertile Memory – but perhaps even more excited to share her own experiences. 'I have always loved poetry from childhood, really, that's really inspired by my family but in terms of writing, it just sort of comes out naturally. But also because there was an interest in the community of personal experience of being from the Occupied Palestinian Territories and being in Scotland, I've developed it initially from people's interest but also a way of telling our stories and experiences,' she says. Shawa was born in Palestine, but at the age of eight, she travelled to Scotland to get treatment for her cerebral palsy, where she has lived ever since, though she often travelled back to visit family. READ MORE: Israeli strikes kill 49 people in Gaza as charity warns food is running out 'My book is a collection of prose and poetry but mainly out of the experience of trying to get back, the biggest story is from when I tried to go back and see my ill mother and the horrific treatment that I had to endure both as someone with a disability and in terms of the being Palestinian, but of course now it's absolutely … even that crossing that I described in that piece, of course, is a pile of rubble.' Looking back now, those memories of home are bittersweet. 'Although leaving Gaza at the age of eight to come to Scotland, I still was able to go regularly and have that connection. I'm still connected to Gaza and the culture and heritage. 'In my lifetime there's always been an occupation, there's always been an oppression but, you know, Palestinians in general are very resilient and they always strive on, push on, and really make life the best that they could in all its circumstances. And so in spite of all the hardships, you know, my own family, we had a beautiful, really beautiful life, in beautiful places in spite of the occupation,' she says. 'But bringing it back to the genocide now, even throughout the 18 months of this horror, people have been really trying to make the best of the circumstances and trying to overcome it, but it's just … and each time that resilience is shown, the oppression gets harder, the reaction is harder, and that's where we are today.' Shawa talks frankly about Israel's genocide and destruction of her homeland – because it's so much more than destroying lives, it's destroying a people's history. 'There were more than 44 Unesco heritage sites completely destroyed, and there's been no protection whatsoever, no regard for any kind of history or heritage. 'Even non-Palestinian, even Byzantine or Roman or Greek heritage that has been present for thousands of years in that place, there's been no regard and no voices, really, to say 'look, you can't do that'. 'My grandfather, our family, have had a lot of really rooted presence in Gaza in regards to Palestinian rights, justice, in politics, in art, in academia, in medicine. One of the things that my grandfather did was fund and build institutions to help society, such as medical, disability facilities, as well as cultural – he founded the Rashad Shawa Cultural Centre. It was classed as a Unesco heritage site. 'And that was destroyed by Israel. He built cinemas in the 30s and 40s and they're all gone. It's just quite a … it's just like a complete erasure of everything. Educational institutes, medical facilities … anything, anything.' To Shawa, the writing is on the wall about the true goal of Israel – complete erasure of Palestinian culture. READ MORE: Pro-Palestine activists target Glasgow office over weapons companies ties 'The true colours are really now quite clear in terms of this project that has been going on for 77 years that they want to finish the job completely but they can't. They can't finish us off. They can't finish who we are or who we were. And that's something the world has got to come to terms with. There is a people called Palestine and there is heritage. 'And the amount of … all those murdered people were really highly professional people, highly educated people, innovative. You know, there's inventors. Inventors who could have solved so many solutions of our time that have been just finished off just because they were Palestinian. 'So yes, I have lots of lovely memories and lots of significant memories of family gatherings, picnics. There was a lot of nature, you know, a lot of Palestinian culture is very much connected to the land, as you know, and moving through life with the seasons.' The natural imagery really shines through in her poetry, especially her particularly stunning poem The Wave, which she says comes from her childhood of cypress trees. 'Nature was really intertwined with our lives, connected completely. So it was just a natural thing. We lost a lot… many, many people lost a lot – their trees, just out of destruction, out of sheer, sheer destruction, and that's why in my Wave, I say, 'why do you hate me? Why do you hate my mother's cypress tree? What have they done?' 'What they're trying to do is divide people, pushing them to say and be a true antisemite, which has been totally used and abused, and I refuse that. 'I really refuse to be pushed to that because I have great respect for the religion of Judaism and culture but what the occupation is now using is an extreme fascist element and using, in a warped way, a religion. 'But I refuse. I am against the occupation and it's them that are abusing their religion. That's what the sentiment in The Wave is about.' If there's anything that Shawa wants people to see, it's that Palestinians are not just folk on the news crying out over the bodies of their family members, but real people. READ MORE: Kneecap taking action over 'false accusations of antisemitism' at Coachella gig 'The Palestinians have a right, they only want justice, really, and to exist peacefully like any other, or most of this world. That's really… and I think if my voice or my experience and my sentiment comes across that we really only want our rights, really. Nothing more. 'It's as if the media is just grasping onto a really warped ideology to really finish and push and make the dream a reality, but I only really want people to know Palestinians just on an ordinary level and not as people who are wailing and crying with their wounds or wailing over their children or really angry or … yeah, to know who we are. That we're very similar people in many ways – intellectually, culturally. That's what I really want to come across. There is so much strength, I say that, and part of my book, I really thank the people of Gaza for inspiring me. Gaza has always inspired me with how it's able to rise and innovate in the darkest of times.' Indigenous Soul: Gaza And Me is available through MainPoint books
