Music from the Landscape

ROB ADAMS caught up with pianist and composer JAMES ROSS ahead of the premiere of his new commission for this year’s Blas Festival

WICK-BORN pianist and composer James Ross will premiere his Blas 2008 commission, Chasing the Sun, in Achiltibuie, followed by a performance in his home town the following day, and a third one in Resolis. It is the festival’s second commission, following last year’s KIN from Duncan Chisholm.

Written for Ross himself on piano, the McFalls Chamber string quartet and Fraser Fifield’s soprano saxophone, whistles and smallpipes, the piece depicts a journey along the north coast of Caithness and Sutherland and uses the visual imagery of Catriona Murray’s photography as well as notes on the page to set the scene.

ROB ADAMS: You’ve taken inspiration from your home turf – and surf – in previous works, including your Celtic Connections 2005 New Voices Commission, An Cuan, and more recently in a piece for the Caithness Orchestra. Apart from being where you come from, what is it about the area that gets the creative juices flowing?

JAMES ROSS: Well, it’s not that I’m homesick, living in Edinburgh, although it might seem that way because I keep coming back like this. There’s something reassuring about places you’ve known all your life, obviously, but I find that every time I go back to Caithness I’ll see small differences. Maybe it’s something that I just didn’t notice before or maybe it’s just the way I remember certain things.

I find looking at the coastline particularly brings out musical ideas. There’s a drama in it visually and of course the sea suggests rhythm, and it just seems a constant challenge to try and evoke the landscape through music. I sometimes think that, if I was a writer or a poet, the area would still trigger ideas or make me want to describe it.

RA: The difference this time is that you’ve collaborated with a visual artist, Catriona Murray, whose photographs are an integral part of the presentation. What was it like having a creative partner and how did it work?

JR: It was really inspiring, actually. We spent about two weeks going round locations that I’d thought about, visiting at different times of day – because places look totally different at sunset compared to, say, the early afternoon, and we wanted to get the different shades and colours that creep in.

Catriona’s an amazing photographer with such a great eye for detail and moods and just spending time with her and chatting about what we both wanted to bring to the project was really, really useful from a practical point of view. If we’d worked completely separately, with Catriona going off and photographing things and the two of us sending each other e-mails or something, it still might have turned out okay, I don’t know. But this way was great and felt like a real collaboration.”

RA: But once you had the photographs, you were on your own.

JR: That’s true, but it was really interesting actually having something to compose with or to. You know, I could look at Catriona’s shots and be back in Caithness. So it wasn’t totally like I was facing a blank sheet of paper every time I sat down at the piano, although I actually quite like that, too, in a way. Every time you get asked to compose something, there’s the fear factor: am I going to be able to do this? And then once you get over that initial challenge, you feel better, more confident. It’s kind of like stage fright, I suppose.

RA: What form does the music actually take?

JR: It’s in six chunks, although I should probably say movements, of about ten minutes each, and each movement is based on a traditional-style melody that I’ve written. So we state the melody and then it develops. For example, it might start off as an air but we take it into different meters and although it’s essentially the same tune as we started out on, it could finish off as a reel. I did that to try and communicate the changes in seasons and how landscapes evolve through time.

RA: When you’re writing parts for other musicians, do you compose with their particular musical personalities in mind?

JR: As far as possible, yes. I mean, I hadn’t written for the pipes before this piece, so that was something I had to do a bit of homework on beforehand. But I love the sound Fraser has on the saxophone and the McFalls guys are a total inspiration. They seem to be able to move effortlessly between musical styles, and I love people who can do that because I don’t think anyone – or at least anyone I know – only listens to one style of music.

There’s a whole lot of stuff goes into my music, maybe not in an obvious way, but I listen to a lot of jazz pianists – Esbjörn Svensson and Keith Jarrett are two big favourites – and I think what goes in through your ears comes out in the notes you play or write. And the thing with the McFalls was that I knew that whatever I wrote, they’d be able to make it come alive.

RA: Did you listen to other string quartet music as you were writing this piece, by way of research?

JR: Oh, totally. Learn from the masters is good advice because I learned a lot from listening to Bartok’s string quartets. I love his folky stuff, too, and Ravel and Messiaen have been inspirations as well. It’s a constant study, composing, because ultimately, you’re on your own.

I went on a two-week composers course on Orkney with Sally Beamish and Alasdair Nicholson about three years ago, and that was brilliant because they gave such good feedback. When you’re working by yourself, you can really only trust your own judgement. So having someone who’s been there and at a really high level, like Sally, point out where you’re going wrong or what might or might not work on a particular instrument, is really invaluable.

RA: The piece you wrote on Orkney featured piano but you didn’t play on the performance; what did that feel like?

JR: It was great, no pressure to perform – except I still had to pray that I’d got the writing right. But that was really interesting. I wrote for string trio, clarinet and piano, and being able to sit and hear the whole thing, just as a member of the audience, allowed me to be more objective about my writing. I love being in the band, too, like I am with Chasing the Sun, because the music evolves as it gets played and I like being part of that. But I don’t know, I see big name composers sitting in the auditorium, listening to their pieces being played for the first time and I sometimes think, that’s what I should be aspiring to.

RA: So what’s next? Have you anything else on the stocks?

JR: I always have stuff that I’m working on. I like the line about inspiration striking when the cheque comes through the letter box but I really prefer to keep working on ideas and refining things because quite often something from the doodles and scrawls that I make between commissions comes in handy and can be reworked or developed. Or it might be that I can refine something from an orchestral arrangement into something smaller.

That happened in a couple of places with Chasing the Sun, in fact. What I’ve learned particularly from this piece is that this is really what I want to do. I still play on recording sessions – my girlfriend, Michelle [Burke, currently singing with Cherish the Ladies, also featured in the Blas line-up this year], has an album coming out and I play on that, and I played on the harper Ailie Robertson’s album, First Things First, earlier this year.

But it’s three years – nearly four – since I wrote An Cuan and I feel I’ve grown quite a bit as a composer since then, especially through doing other work like the Caithness Orchestra piece and the Sorley MacLean tribute I was involved in. So, yeah, more of the same, please, is what I’m after.

James Ross’s Chasing the Sun will be performed in the Coigach Community Hall, Achiltibuie (9 September); The Assembly Rooms, Wick (10 September); and Resolis Memorial Hall, Balblair (11 September). Blas 2008 runs from 5-13 September 2008.

© Rob Adams, 2008

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