Dee and Don Ceilidh Collective launches online project – Our Living Rivers and Glens – using local landscape as inspiration for new music
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A NORTH-EAST music initiative has launched a new project encouraging people to take inspiration from their local landscape to create new music and song alongside some of the area's first-rate traditional musicians.
The Dee and Don Ceilidh Collective, a charity set up in 2016, is urging people to get involved in its new "Our Living Rivers and Glens" initiative, which has received funding from Creative Scotland.
The free project will encourage participants to explore their local landscape, and collect their responses in word, sound, video and images. These impressions will then be uploaded to an online map.
Composers, including fiddlers Charlie McKerron, of Capercaillie, and Tarland’s Paul Anderson, will draw inspiration from the map to create new music.
The musicians will meet the participants through online Zoom workshops, allowing them to be involved in the creative process.
North-east artists Gill Russell and Peter Stollery will lead the gathering, mapping and collating aspects of the project.
Participants can also work alongside fiddlers Adam Sutherland and Arthur Coates and multi-instrumentalists Hamish Napier and Fraser Fifield and there will be an opportunity to create new songs with singers Jenny Sturgeon, Huntly's Iona Fyfe and Shona Donaldson.
Experienced tutors Averil Blackhall, Grace Banks, Pete MacCallum and Carola MacCallum will also be involved in the Zoom workshops and will teach the new tunes on a variety of instruments including fiddle, guitar, voice and clarsach.
Gill said: "We are very lucky to be able to wander freely through the wonderful landscapes of our rivers and glens. Connecting with place is always very personal and depends on one’s own inspirations, experience, memory and connections.
"I am looking forward to seeing the diverse range of responses generated by our participants."
Steve Garrett, of The Dee and Don Ceilidh Collective, said: "We are excited to begin exploring new ways of working to connect people to the landscape and each other again.
"We are grateful for funding from Creative Scotland's Open Fund in supporting our artists and musicians who have, no doubt, just faced the most challenging year in their careers."
As well as learning the new music online it is hoped to organise a gathering later in the year to perform together.
Find out more and sign up at www.deedonceilidhcollective.com/our-living-rivers-and-glens.
