Traditional Scottish songs performed by Poles will resound throughout the interiors of Edinburgh’s medieval churches during evenings this summer. The Polish Song of the Goat Theatre ensemble returns to Scotland following their great success presenting Songs of Lear in 2012. Their new project is entitled Return to the Voice, and it features a guest appearance by legendary jazz vocalist Anna Maria Jopek. Audiences in the Festival City will also experience concerts of Poland’s unique I, CULTURE Orchestra, whose 111 young members will join more than three thousand artists from 40 different countries during the rich program of the International Edinburgh Festival.
Below is more information about these two events from culture.pl:
The Return to the Voice project is supported by the talent and sensitivity of jazz vocalist Anna Maria Jopek and a Corsican artist, Jean-Claude Acquaviva. Grzegorz Bral, the founder and director of Song of the Goat theatre explains how the archaic musical scales from Na H-Eileanan siar and the growingly rare Gaelic language are employed in the piece in a completely new way.
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This intimate performance dedicated to tradition and forgetting will be presented at a very significant moment for the Scottish people. Return to the Voice showings come two months before a referendum in which the Scots are to decide about their possible independence. The world premiere of a piece supported by Culture.pl takes place on the 6th of August at the St.Giles Cathedral, and showings run through to the 25th of August. Apart from the Song of the Goat Theatre, there will also be performances of contemporary Polish dance. Anna Nowicka will present her solo piece The Truth is Just a Plain Picture, said Bob at Dance Base, and Agata Maszkiewicz will also show a solo project titled Polska.
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2014 marks the passing of 100 years since the outbreak of World War I. Artists invited to perform at the Edinburgh International Festival will refer to the history of relations between culture and political conflict. During a press conference, the artistic director of the event Jonathan Mills reminded of the long time presence of Polish artists in Edinburgh, calling the collaboration an honour. He also explained that with this year’s theme, there appears the chance of “transgressing the political in favour of the human”.
Participants of the I, CULTURE Orchestra project admit that playing at the Scottish festival is a sign of recognition and a great honour for them. In Edinburgh, they will perform alongside the Royal Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and the London Philharmonic. A gala concert of the ICO takes place on the 17th of August, with young musicians from Poland and the Eastern Partnership countries performing Andrzej Panufnik‘s Sinfonia elegiaca, and Symphony No. 7 ( Leningrad) by Dmitriy Shostakovich. Kirill Karabits, a prominent conductor of Ukrainian origin, leads the ensemble, with young pianist talents Alice Sara Ott and Simon Trpceski on solo. After Szymanowski and Lutosławski which had a strong presence in the 2012 EIF programme, this year will also resound with music from Polish composers Krzysztof Penderecki, Henryk Mikołaj Górecki, and the aforementioned Andrzej Panufnik.
To learn more about the I, Culture Orchestra and its 2014 tour, see the next article below.
[Source: culture.pl (Edited by Anna Legierska, translated by Paulina Schlosser)]