BODYSURF Scotland’s second programme in this series of inspiringly different dance opens with a darkened stage, a nested line of white plastic coffee cups, and a prone body on the floor.

Rosalind Masson

ALMOST imperceptibly a soundscape becomes audible and the body (dancer/choreographer Rosalind Masson) begins to move, apparently randomly, before lapsing into stillness, again and again. Masson has the enviable ability to make each move look as though it happens organically, involuntarily, without a hint of anticipation of the next. Somehow the progression from her sporadic waking up to chaotic (in the mathematical sense) whirling movements succeeds in conveying the underlying feeling of climate change heralded in the title, The Oceans are Drowning. As the lights dim, the white coffee cups, now scattered, glow enigmatically …. It’s both an effective and a beautiful meld of science and dance.

The second work is a solo improvisation by Dutch performer Benno Voorham, who’s been based in Stockholm since 1995 and brings with him that rich European traditional mix of mime, clowning, and physical dance/theatre which we rarely see in Scotland. His humour is refreshing and irresistible, particularly his marvellously economical seal – a seal in red tartan pyjama bottoms. How often, apart from the pantomime-ish Ugly Sisters in Cinderella, does dance make you laugh out loud? Like Ballet Boyz last month at Eden Court, Voorham’s work also makes the case that the male dancer, and here the older male dancer, is worthy of our attention as more than an accessory.

Seke Chimutengwende

Seke Chimutengwende performs another solo improvisation, another extraordinary mix of genres, this time dance, poetry and standup. Imagine, if you can, the anger of a young Billy Connolly, the surrealism of Bill Bailey and the eloquence of John Cooper Clarke, with a generous dollop of existential philosophy and environmentalism. Astringent, refreshing, and a fitting closer to a programme which successfully questions and enlarges our understanding of dance.

Bodysurf Scotland return to Universal Hall with My Skin Is Still Singing on 18 May 2012.

© Jennie Macfie, 2012

Links

• Bodysurf Scotland
• Universal Hall
• Jennie Macfie

The Universal Hall comprises: a main auditorium, dance studio, recording studio and Blue Angel Cafe with art exhibition space.

LOGIC SUGGESTS that after sixteen years the concept of Opera Highlights, or Essential Scottish Opera as we used to know it, would have become jaded. But not a bit of it. This year’s tour is as fresh as the dew, and if the reaction of the sell-out audience at Findhorn last Saturday is anything to go by, the show’s appeal and popularity are as strong as ever.

Adrian Ward, Robert Tucker, Miranda Sinani and Louise Collett in Opera Highlights (photo - Drew Farrell).

So, how do Scottish Opera manage it? Other than a name change, the company remains faithful to the tried and tested formula of four young singers, a pianist and a semi-staged selection of well-known and little known operatic excerpts, all professionally directed so that the show runs smoothly.

Under its Emerging Artists Programme, Scottish Opera has a ready supply of talented singers to take on the road. Both the female roles, the Albanian soprano Miranda Sinani and the English mezzo Louise Collett, joined this programme after studying at the RSAMD in Glasgow.

For the male roles, both singers were making their Scottish Opera debuts – tenor Adrian Ward, and baritone Robert Tucker, who joins that long line of singers from the antipodes who come to the UK to hone their skills. Add to the quartet pianist Ruth Wilkinson making her first ESO tour, and David Hunter (who was a member of the Out of Eden team at Eden Court Theatre) to make his Scottish Opera directorial debut, and it is easy to understand why this production is so fresh.

Twenty-two excerpts in quick succession, each one linked into the programme, kept the audience enthralled. Starting with Robert Tucker’s rendition of the ‘Champagne Aria’ from Mozart’s Don Giovanni, right through to the quartet ‘I am easily assimilated’ from Bernstein’s Candide, the selection flowed, often with unexpected humour, such as the end-of-the-pier photo booth manner in which Acis and Galatea were scaled down against the giant Polyphemus for ‘The flocks shall leave the mountains’ by Handel, or Miranda Sinani as the drunken statue in the ‘Drinking Song’ from von Suppé’s The Beautiful Galathea.

These days the traditional stand-and-deliver style of opera is no longer acceptable, and acting has become an integral part of the young singer’s training. It is an accepted custom that the tenor gets the best of the male songs, so Adrian Ward was more restrained as he acted and baritone Robert Tucker was more rumbustious.

By contrast for the females, the soprano, Miranda Sinani, gets the best songs, but is also more animated, whereas the mezzo Louise Collett relied on her beautiful warm strong voice and was more subtle in her gestures, as in Walton’s “I was a constant faithful wife’, where the cocking of an eyebrow or the removal of a glove spoke volumes.

The Findhorn performance was but the sixth of twenty-one venues over a seven-week period, making this the longest tour ever undertaken by Scottish Opera. The company move on to Torridon, Ardross, Strathy and Gairloch before heading to Skye, Benebecula and Barra then back to the mainland for communities in the south, ending up at Livingston on Saturday 20 March.

They say that temptation is no fun unless you yield to it, and I am sorely tempted to follow them to one of those venues for a second memorable evening of musical excerpts as they are meant to be presented.

© James Munro, 2010

Links

• Opera Highlights

Director’s Statement: Peter Vallance

MANY ARTISTS arrive at the Universal Hall, as part of a tour of the Highlands and Islands, expecting a village hall. The most usual word they utter on entering the auditorium is “wow”. An understandable reaction to seeing a pentagon-shaped roof soaring above a beech dance floor surrounded by 300 raked seats.

The Hall was built over a 10 year period by the Findhorn Foundation and visiting volunteers. Local mythology insists that one of these volunteers was Hollywood film star Burt Lancaster, who spent a day working on the building.

The stone work around the building shows exceptional artistry and there are many hidden carvings. Look for the Newgrange-style lightbox which welcomes the mid summer sunset and the face gazing down on the cappucino drinkers from under the eaves.

The Universal Hall is situated within the Findhorn Foundation, which is an eco-village on the shores of the Moray Firth. The Arts have always been an important part of community life and the venue provides an outlet for community artistry as well as hosting visiting professional companies.

The Hall puts on 30 professional concerts a year and is in use nearly every weekend throughout the year. The integral Blue Angel Cafe is open every day for lunch, drinks and cake. It is licensed for evening events when it opens before every show. A popular open mic event is held monthly in the cafe which can now be heard on internet radio.

A number of artists have written music extolling the Hall. Richard Wood, the Cape Breton fiddler, wrote a tune, ‘Flying at Findhorn’, after being mesmerised by the dancers who cavorted to his fiddle. The recent tune ‘The Findhorn Hot Tub’ is pretty much self-explanatory, and it is a place where a few artists have held post-show discussions. Most famously, Mike Scott recorded his Universal Hall album here with the Waterboys.

Peter Vallance, Artistic Director

Peter Vallance faces the questions:

Northings: When was the venue established?

PV: The Universal Hall was designed and built almost entirely by the voluntary labour of Findhorn Foundation Community members over the course of 10 years. It opened in 1977.

Northings: What famous names have taken to the stage?

PV: Donovan, Mike Scott & the Waterboys, Capercaillie, Blazin’ Fiddles, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, National Theatre of Scotland, TAG, 7.84, Eddi Reader.

Northings: What are your big ideas for the future of the venue?

PV: We would like to be able to show first run films on cinema quality digital projection equipment (for which we are just submitting an application to Scottish Screen). We would like retractable seating to increase the flexibility of the venue. We would like to build a bigger dance studio behind the Hall.

Northings: Does the venue have a ghost?

PV: No.

Northings: What was your worst disaster?

PV: We never learn. The Aberdeen International Youth Festival offered us a Chinese dance company this year (2008). Two weeks before the show they cancelled and we were told we would get an African dance company who did not get visas. So we got a Trinidad Steel Band. Who were great – but not what anyone was expecting.

Northings: And what was your biggest triumph?

PV: Donovan only played two concerts in Scotland in 2005. One was at the Universal Hall. The concert sold out in 56 minutes.

Northings: If you could have any artist in the world for a one off special, who would it be and why?

PV: Bob Dylan. Because I am a fan!

Northings: Why should people look forward to visiting your venue?

PV: Outrageously often we are told by visiting artists that their show here was “the best show of our tour!!”, and they always want to know when they can return. People always get up and dance. Most recently the Trinidad Steel Band played ‘Scotland the Brave’ and everyone got up to do the Gay Gordons.

Audience members also find the atmosphere special and keep coming back. Our unique 5-sided auditorium with three-quarters thrust performance area gives both artists and audience a heightened feeling of intimacy, connection and participation. Magic can happen, and frequently does.

© HI-Arts, 2008

Links

• Universal Hall

Union Dance - Celestial Dawning

TRIUMPH and tragedy often walk hand in hand but at the Universal Hall they were dancing together on stage. In 2007 Union Dance celebrated its twenty first anniversary; since 1986 this London-based company has earned an international reputation for its emphasis on integration and growth at all levels, and for an inclusive, eclectic style, incorporating elements of ancient martial arts and the latest street dance with equal aplomb.

The programme for this tour began with ‘Sublime Element’, choreographed by Tayeb Benamara (Algeria) for the company and shorn of back projections here. The soundscape nonetheless succeeding in creating an initially urban ambience through which the dancers wove swiftly, singly, paths constantly intersecting but avoiding all personal contact at first in the way that citydwellers do and rural folk don’t.

Movements, strongly influenced by t’ai chi, seemed separate and unrelated but were gradually repeated fractally, until a pattern almost began to emerge and there was briefly a moment of unison, a powerful image indeed, as all six dancers paused, tightly interlocked.

The soundscape became rural with bells, water and birdsong, and the choreography fragmented again as it moved to themes of ending and death. It was an interesting, cerebral piece, with some unusual lifts where one dancer hung, frog-like, from the legs of another, with all the strange totemic power of Mayan carvings and Australian aboriginal art.

Findhorn was denied the musical transition performed live by Juwon Ogungbe, so there was merely a pause before the second work, a duet entitled ‘Two Bye Two’. This featured Will Thorburn – son of Andy, pianist mainstay of Blazin’ Fiddles and other Highland musical entities too numerous to mention – and Navala Chaudhari .

Set to Arvo Part’s exquisite ‘Fratres’, it was commissioned from Vietnamese choreographer Anh Ngoc Nguyen, and worked to the strong suits of the two participants, Chaudhari’s smooth, supple -to-the-point-of-bonelessness sinousity and Thorburn’s capoeira-enhanced power and grace. The duet tracked the sine curve of a passionate love affair from a playful “does my bum look big in this?” moment, swiftly followed by an initially ecstatic coupling.

The Literary Review awards an annual Bad Sex Award to writers; I have, mercifully, lost count of the number of works I have seen which would have qualified for the terpsichorean equivalent. Were there a Good Sex Award, ‘Two Bye Two’ would be a shoo-in, conveying the full sensual whammy of the act of love without degenerating into pornography, eroticism, or embarrassment. On the verge of romanticism, the moves were already being reprised, refigured hard and angry, culminating in – neatly underplayed – violence, and breakup.

Chaudhari was left alone and fragile on a darkening stage before an audience whose emotional withers had been thoroughly wrung. The two dancers accepted loud cheers and applause with brief bows and drew the rest of the company on stage to share their reward – a simple gesture which spoke volumes about the company’s ethos.

After the interval, ‘Celestial Dawning’ by long-term company member Michael Joseph, began with enthralling projections of nebulae – a literal evocation of heaven on earth. The core of the piece was three overlapping duets, featuring some more great, unusual lifts; more than any company I have seen in the past few years, this accomplished team of dancers appeared to be entirely, effortlessly weightless – a tribute to intense training. Or as the old phrase has it, ars celare artem. The thoughtfully assembled soundtrack included some thumping drum n bass to accompany the dance vocabulary of street moves, and helped to create an exciting, more easily accessible dynamic.

So those were the triumphs. The tragedy? A company which on last night’s showing has to be ticking every possible box in the bureaucratic quality assessment table for expected outcomes, inclusiveness, education and outreach, additionality, excellence, and all the other management-speak rubbish (I paraphrase out of regard for sensitive dispositions) has had its funding withdrawn by the Arts Council England. The money is, allegedly, required for the London Olympics. Words, for once, fail me.

[Even more disturbingly, they are far from alone, and the arts can expect plenty more grief to come as the 2012 juggernaut picks up steam – and let’s not forget the cash-eating potential of those Commonwealth Games in Glasgow – Ed.]

© Jennie Macfie, 2008

Links

• Union Dance

Joseph Swensen.

UNIVERSAL HALL has hosted many events, but I’m prepared to bet that Lesley Quilty and her team never anticipated the day when they would host the world premiere performance of a ‘new’ work by Johannes Brahms.

Okay, so Brahms died in 1897, and I concede that he didn’t actually write the work in question. The ‘Sinfonia in B’, to give it its chosen title, was an orchestration of Brahms’ early Piano Trio, arranged for orchestra by Joseph Swensen, the former Principal Conductor and now Emeritus Conductor of the orchestra.

Before mounting the podium, Swensen took a moment to remind us all that this was in fact the world premiere, since the programme neglected to mention the fact, and to thank the players for their contribution to the unfolding of the work.

He wrote it very much with this orchestra in mind, and one of his intentions was that it should reflect their considerable virtuosity in a way that Brahms seldom if ever did with his own orchestral music, which leans to the conservative, perhaps because he did not feel any great confidence in the standards of the orchestral playing of his day.

Orchestral players are a different kettle of fish these days, and Swensen was determined to test out his idea that an orchestration of the neglected early version of the Trio – more of that in a moment – could reflect he kind of virtuosity that Brahms routinely built into his piano and chamber music.

The vehicle he chose for this task was the original and rarely performed version of the Trio, Op 8. Brahms revised the work three decades after its original composition with better sales in mind, and changed it almost beyond recognition, but chose to retain the original opus number. Thus, the familiar version of the Trio is really late Brahms masquerading as early, and the early version is now sadly neglected.

Swensen set himself the task of restoring it to the attention of the concert-going public via an orchestration that emerged as part Brahms, part Swensen, part the ghost of Schumann (his influence was excised from the revision of the piece), and partly the zeitgeist of the post-Brahmsian era, with its more virtuoso orchestral playing and more modern harmonic sensibility.

It was often an exciting and energised piece, full of passion and performed with total commitment by both conductor and orchestra. There was a bit of an air of a child set loose in a toy shop in some of the more lavish orchestral effects, as though Swensen was desperate to cram in as much as possible. Some of his gambits came across as a little too contrived on first hearing, while others worked spectacularly well, and the whole provided an absorbing – if not always particularly Brahmsian – experience.

The concert opened the second leg of the SCO’s annual Highland tour, and like its predecessor in June, it featured one of the Wind Concertos by Mozart included on last year’s CD recording under that name from the orchestra. Mozart has always been a staple item on the SCO’s menu, but the celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth has brought an expanded focus on his work this year.

In Strathpeffer in June, Ursula Leveaux played the Bassoon Concerto under the baton of Estonian conductor Olari Elts. She captured both the melodic grace and the wide leaps of the vivacious first movement in supple fashion, and rose to the lyrical challenge of the aria-like slow movement and vibrant rondo finale with equal conviction.

The orchestra responded with typically crisp and expressive playing in a programme that also included French composer Jacques Ibert’s affectionate ‘Hommage á Mozart’, a stylish and witty tribute, and Mozart’s Adagio and Fugue in C minor, originally written for two pianos but performed here in Mozart’s own version for strings, the Overture from ‘Don Giovanni’, and a committed and beautifully detailed account of another familiar masterpiece, the great ‘Symphony No 40’.

Elts’ interpretation of issues like accentuation, dynamics and tempo was impeccable throughout, and the players showed every sign of forming a very productive partnership with the conductor.

The productivity of their ongoing relationship with Swensen is long since established beyond any doubt. In Findhorn it was the turn of principal flute Alison Mitchell to step up from the ranks in Mozart’s ‘Flute Concerto in G’, following a colourful account of Mendelssohn’s ‘Overture: The Fair Melusine’.

A lighting malfunction delayed Mitchell’s entrance for a few minutes, but when she was allowed to take the stage, she delivered a poised and expressive account of the gorgeous solo part, notably in the wonderful slow movement that is the heart of this work.

Mozart may have said that he disliked flute, but he was congenitally incapable of writing anything other than beautiful music for it. Her playing was supported by impeccable orchestral playing in the richly textured accompaniments, although the un-scored participation of a passing jet from the adjacent RAF KInloss during the first movement cadenza was unfortunate.

The Scottish Chamber Orchestra have been sorely missed over the winter with the suspension of Eden Court’s orchestral concert series, and it was good to seem them back in such fine form. The Highland Tour concludes in the customary manner in September with separate concerts from the Strings and Wind Ensembles.

© George MacKay, 2006

Herlin Riley

THE NAIRN JAZZ FESTIVAL is very much a traditional and mainstream jazz event, but every now and again Ken Ramage throws in an artist working in a more modern context. The Herlin Riley Quartet fitted that bill this year, and delivered a memorable performance in the second of their two festival performances in a mercifully cooler Universal Hall.

If the weather had eased off, there was no reduction in the musical temperature. That has been at sizzling point all week, and Riley and his associates ensured that it would remain so. The drummer is most familiar as the man behind the kit in the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and in most of Wynton Marsalis’s own projects over the past 14 years, but he demonstrated here that he is a natural bandleader in his own right.

Not content with some of the most propulsive and musical drumming currently to be found in jazz, he threw in a rap in the course of their energised version of Miles Davis’s ‘So What’ and sang in exchanges with the audience on a Cajun song he learned from the legendary Danny Barker as a young teenager, and also on the traditional New Orleans style encore, ‘Paul Barbarin’s Second Line’, a tribute both to his home town and the great drummer who wrote the song.

The meat of their two high-powered sets lay in more modern material, although we are still talking about the 60s for much of it. Thelonious Monk’s ‘Green Chimneys’ provided a challenging opening as the band hit their stride. John Coltrane’s ‘Impressions’ paid tribute to the great saxophonist, but their version of ‘Softly, As In a Morning Sunrise’ in the second set also owed a great deal to Coltrane’s signature style.

Saxophonist Tim Green is a relatively recent recruit to jazz from a more funk and rhythm and blues context, but he sounded anything but a tyro in engaging with the music. Pianist Doug Bickel was outstanding, and bassist Rodney Whittaker, another bandleader in his own right, was a magisterial presence at the heart of the band, and contributed his composition paying tribute to the late pianist and co-founder of the Modern Jazz Quartet, ‘John Lewis’.

Riley also featured a couple of his own compositions, and threw in a slice of down home soul jazz, Big John Patton’s ‘Funky Mama’, to close the first set in boisterous and good-humoured fashion. They concluded their scheduled set with a fiery version of the Ellington-Tizol classic ‘Caravan’, a final reminder of just how good this band is.

A bit too modern for the audience? Not a bit of it – they roared their approval at the end, and brought the band back for that final bit of fun with Barbarin’s song.

© Kenny Mathieson, 2004

Niki Haris

SEVENTEEN YEARS as Madonna’s backing singer and choreographer can hardly have failed to pay off in terms of stage presence, and Niki Haris was having nothing to do with the staid conventions of presentation that prevail in jazz singing. Having began by gently chiding the sound desk because she could not hear herself in her monitor, she proceeded to cover every inch of the Universal Hall floor space available to her, while pretty much ignoring the monitor completely.

If her sassy stage show was derived from the pop music side of her activities, she has a genuine jazz lineage in her family as well. Her father was jazz pianist Gene Harris, although she has adopted Haris as her preferred style (both spellings are arbitrary – his real name was Haire).

She has a genuine love for the music that came across in everything she did, whether a familiar standard like ‘Cheek to Cheek’ or ‘My Romance’, or a rhythm and blues borrowing like ‘Down Home Blues’ or ‘You Made Your Move Too Soon’, delivered in impressively raunchy fashion.

Her singing style drew on jazz, soul, rhythm and blues and a touch of gospel in various permutations, but was always expressive, whatever the combination. She was equally convincing in raw, uptempo songs and in gentle ballads, and has a gift for communication with her audience that quickly won over a full house in a hot and sweaty Universal Hall.

She brought her regular pianist, San Francisco-based Karen Hammack, with her, and was joined by bassist Andy Cleyndert and special guest Herlin Riley on drums. That is a superb trio by any standards, and they remained alert to every twist, turn and verbal digression – and there were plenty of those – in her scintillating performance.

© Kenny Mathieson, 2004

Angelo Debarre

THE NAIRN JAZZ FESTIVAL actually got underway along the road at the Universal Hall in Findhorn, a venue that will play a major part in this year’s event, including exclusive appearances by two of the headlining artists, guitarist Angelo Debarre and singer Niki Haris. Many of the other headliners, including Duke Heitger, are scheduled to play in both Nairn and Findhorn, giving two bites at the cherry on the one hand, and some schedule-juggling dilemmas on the other.

That is how it should be at festivals, and minor setbacks like the last-minute withdrawal of star names should not be allowed to mar the occasion either. French guitar star Bireli Lagrene was due to make his festival debut in the opening concert this year, but illness meant the late drafting-in of another big name in the gypsy-jazz firmament, Angelo Debarre, plucked from his holidays in Chamonix to fill the gap.

Debarre linked up with the scheduled trio of violinist Christian Garrick, rhythm guitarist Dave Kelbie and bassist Pete Kubryck-Townsend for an exciting set in the famous string-driven, Reinhardt-Grappelli inspired Hot Club style, with some more contemporary twists thrown in. The driving rhythms brought a certain sameness to the music over a full set, a characteristic of the style, but they ripped through the combination of jazz standards and Reinhardt compositions in exhilarating fashion.

“Their treatments … breathed new vitality into both the repertoire and the musical tradition itself.”

The advance praise proved to be well-founded. The music may have been as familiar and even hoary as in any run-of-the-mill trad band pub bash, but the playing was as good as it gets in this style, both in the exciting polyphonic ensembles and in the succinct, crisply focussed soloing.

The band combined younger stars like Heitger and the equally impressive Evan Christopher on clarinet with established figures like drummer Tony DeNicola and trombonist Bob Havens, and added both saxophonist Brian Ogilvy and bassist Andy Cleyndert as guests to the visiting sextet (pianist Steve Pistorius and guitarist Lars Edegren completed the New Orleans contingent).

Their treatments of chestnuts like ‘Royal Garden Blues’ or a version of ‘High Society’ taken at breakneck tempo were both fresh and exciting, and they breathed new vitality into both the repertoire and the musical tradition itself in the course of two captivating sets. An excellent start to the week.

© Kenny Mathieson, 2004

Location:  Findhorn, Moray
Details:  Venue comprises a 280-seat auditorium seats, Green Room Café, Findhorn Foundation Visitor Centre, dance studio, music room, on-site recording studio and video editing facilities.
Programme:  Music, dance, drama, community events, art exhibitions.

Director’s Statement

The Universal Hall Arts Center is the best equipped, and I believe most beautiful, facility between Inverness and Aberdeen, and is an extremely popular venue with artists and audiences alike.

During the ten years of its construction, thousands of people put their love and skills into making each area into a work of art, from the intricate patterns of the stone wall facings to the burnt-wood finished frames and rafters.

Gracefully landscaped into the Findhorn Foundation community gardens, and only a few hundred yards from the North Sea and the Moray Firth, the Universal Hall offers the facilities of a city centre for culture and the arts with the tranquility and beauty of a rural setting.

We aim to offer the opportunity for as many people as possible to experience the personal development and delight that comes from exposure to top-quality performance and educational events.  We believe that audience members will find our programme stimulating, inspiring, educational, perhaps even awesome.  We hope that the great variety of work on offer will encourage them to try something new as well as coming out for their favourite artform.

Interview with Director

As part of our profile of the Universal Hall, HI-Arts Journal caught up with venue director, Lesley Quilty.

When was the venue established ?

Lesley: The Universal Hall was designed and built almost entirely by the voluntary labour of Findhorn Foundation Community  members over the course of 10 years.  It opened in 1977.

What famous names have taken to the stage over the years?

Lesley: Mike Scott and the Waterboys, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Paul Winter Consort, Ballet Rambert, Blazin Fiddles, Traverse Theatre, TAG, 7:84 Theatre, Phil Kay.

What are your big ideas for the future of the venue?

Lesley: To up-grade our facilities and equipment, to be the home of a youth theatre, to continue attracting internationally recognized and celebrated artists, to constantly be welcoming new audience members, to be a more formal resource for networking  and information among local artists and arts-lovers.

Does the venue have a ghost?

Lesley: No, but lots of spirits…

What was your worst disaster as director?

Lesley: Three out of  the last four years the exciting African dance companies we had advertised as part of the visiting Aberdeen International Youth Festival have been denied visas at the last minute and had to cancel.

And what was your biggest triumph?

Lesley: Seeing a full-page color ad for the Waterboys new CD titled “Universal Hall” in the Glastonbury Festival 2003 programme.  The CD was recorded in our recording studio, launched with two massive sold-out concerts here at the Hall in June, and the cover features a photo of the magnificent stained glass frontage of the building.

If you could have any artist in the world for a one-off special, who would it be, and why?

Lesley: Van Morrison, because his music and the Universal Hall would just be such a perfect match…ecstatic…Or maybe the superb Scottish singer-songwriter Eddi Reader.
For 3 years my big dream has been to have Mr. McFall’s Chamber Orchestra visit – and that will soon be coming true, as they’ll be doing a 3-day residency with 2 public concerts Sept 10-12 – so dreams do come true!  Roll on Van the Man.

Why should people look forward to visiting the Universal Hall?

Lesley: Outrageously often we are told by visiting artists that their show here was “the best show of our tour!!” and they always want to know when they can return.   Audience members also find the atmosphere special and keep coming back.  Our unique 5-sided auditorium with three-quarters thrust performance area gives both artists and audience a heightened feeling of intimacy, connection and participation.  Magic can happen and frequently does.

FRIDAY EVENING saw the first visit by the complete Scottish Chamber Orchestra to the Universal Hall, an attractive and underused venue that is full of character and atmosphere. If the acoustic lacked a little bloom when the full orchestra was playing, the proximity if the players to the audience gave a tremendous impression of direct involvement.

The group’s resident conductor, Joseph Swensen, took to the violin for the opening work, Brahms’ ‘Violin Concerto’, demonstrating in his highly-charged and dramatic playing what a considerable virtuoso he is. Having recently recorded the Mendelssohn ‘Concerto’ with the SCO, it is to be hoped that we will see more of this admirable aspect of a remarkably versatile musician. Exercising close control over his orchestral forces, he presented a powerfully gutsy reading of the Brahms concerto with real fire in its belly.

The second half of the concert opened with an elegant performance of Mendelssohn’s Overture to ‘Die schöne Melusine’, with some deliciously mellifluous clarinet playing from Maximiliano Martin. The young Mendelssohn wrote the work to address his dissatisfaction with the prelude to an opera by Conradin Kreutzer, and while his replacement itself received a cool reception at its premiere in 1834, further work produced a concert piece which has now achieved considerable popularity.

Appropriately on a sultry evening worthy of Budapest itself, it was a selection of Brahms’ mercurial ‘Hungarian Dances’ which provided a dramatic and passionate conclusion to this enjoyable concert. After the energetic and ever-popular fifth dance an extremely enthusiastic audience, fired up by the orchestral pyrotechnics, demanded a further dance before they would let the orchestra go. This large and engaged public, ranging in age from the elderly to the newborn (breast-fed during the first half), is a ringing endorsement of the SCO’s policy of bringing music to people in more informal settings.

The SCO will perform this programme at Millennium Hall, Invermoriston on 28 June 2003.

© D James Ross, 2003