A FREE online music festival “for the age of the pandemic” is being launched this week.
Pandemonium, a multi-cultural, multi-genre event, is being presented by Govan orchestra, the Glasgow Barons.
“We must access the power of music to heal and unite communities broken by the pandemic, such as Govan,” said artistic director Paul MacAlindin. “We need to rebuild but also to reflect and properly mourn our considerable losses.
“As Glasgow Life artist-in-residence for Govan, we are working hard to help people find the words and tunes to recover. Pandemonium looks the pandemic straight in the eye by supporting those hardest hit: asylum seekers, refugees, Govan’s local people, and venues, young composers, freelance performers, and their support industries.”
The programme begins on Thursday with songs of exile in Gaelic, Scots, Kurmanji Kurdish and Farsi. The evening will explore the experience of migration and will be filmed by Gaelictronica creator Hamish MacLeod in Govan and Linthouse Parish Church.
The following week on January 13, the Glasgow Barons will play Thea Musgrave’s Night Windows in the magnificent MacLeod Hall of Govan’s Pearce Institute with Scottish Opera’s Amy Turner on oboe.
There will be events every week until the festival closes on March 4 when the Glasgow Barons will perform Steg G’s new album Live Today in a live recording with specially commissioned instrumental music by Royal Conservatoire of Scotland graduates Aidan Teplitzky and Kevan O’Reilly.
“There’s a very unique requirement to be excellent and working class,” said Teplitzky, who has written Almost Achilles, Always the Heel. “You need to be perfect in representing the established idea of excellence. Your excellence has to sit comfortably in line with other people’s excellence. Because you only get to stay there and be excellent because they let you.”
O’Reilly said his composition, Scotland versus Scotland, examines the question of Scottish identity. “The political and cultural fault lines that divide our country are musically laid bare in the piece,” he said.
In addition to the festival films, the Glasgow Barons’ community group Musicians in Exile will continue to release songs from around the world as well as original material through the Glasgow Barons’ social media.
Musicians in Exile is a community project for asylum-seeking and refugee musicians formed by the Glasgow Barons. The group won a National Diversity Award and the Voluntary Arts EPIC award for Scotland in 2019.
All the films will be released on Vimeo at 7pm and are Free to view through the Glasgow Barons website: www.glasgowbarons.com.
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