Silent Spring was premiered at Sound festival 2020.

Commissioned by Sound Festival and Red Note Ensemble for Ruth Morley and Alistair MacDonald.

My starting point for writing this piece was to create a musical evocation of shifting baseline syndrome - a psychological and sociological phenomenon whereby each generation accepts their situation as normal, when in truth their environments are ecologically depleted and diminishing. Birds and their songs in particular are embedded in our cultural landscape across the world. And yet some of the most common birds in the UK, 67 species, are now on the RSPB’s Red List of endangered birds. What will the world sound like when there aren’t any birds? Who will remember their song? Much of the material of this piece stems from a recording of Annie Johnston imitating the song of birds in Cainnt nan Eun and in particular the song thrush (smeòrach), recorded by J. L. Campbell on Barra (Outer Hebrides) between 1930 and 1950. I wanted in some way to create a reflection of the way we have lost touch with our natural world - a conversation between humans and the natural world that has broken down.

This piece was created in a log cabin in Glenesk with thanks to my mother, father and younger sister, and Logic Pro X.

Translation
Annie Johnston - ‘Cainnt nan Eun’

Iain ‘ic ille Mhoire bhig
Thig dachaigh! Thig dachaigh!
Ciod thuige? Ciod thuige?
Gud dhìnneir? Gud dhìnneir?
Gu dè dìnneir? Gu dè dìnneir?
Aran cruaidh cuilc ‘s coirce
’s miùg leis, miùg leis

John, son of little Gille Mhoire
Come home!
Why?
To your dinner?
To what dinner?
Oatcakes and whey with it

Silent Spring (Ruth Morley - Red Note Ensemble)

"Nature is in Freefall"

Sound Festival 2021 
Stephanie Lamprea (soprano)
James Banner (double bass).

Originally written for soprano and clarinet, the piece is reimagined here for soprano and double bass.

On Wednesday 18th November 2020, The Scottish Green Party tabled a motion in Scottish Parliament to declare a nature emergency and back ambitious legislation that would aim to halt catastrophic declines in nature. Scottish Parliament failed to declare a nature emergency. The text for this work is taken from the Scottish Green Party petition asking public support for the need to declare a nature emergency.

“Nature is in freefall.
The world faces an unprecedented threat to nature. 
Across the world species are in decline with extinctions accelerating. 
Globally, populations of mammals, birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles have fallen by more than two thirds in less than 50 years.”

My intention for this work is to convey this message simply and honestly, almost as lament to the natural world we are losing so rapidly. When the world is facing such shocking and catastrophic decline in nature, the foundation of all life on Earth, it is unbelievable that powerful politicians aren’t taking every opportunity available to protect all that we love. As the Scottish Greens say themselves in their statement, ‘the solutions are there, it’s the political will that’s missing’.

Nature Is In Freefall - Stephanie Lamprea and James Banner (Sound Festival 2021)

Commissioned and performed by members of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. 

Aisling O'Dea - Violin
Felix Tanner - Viola
Philip Higham - Cello
Brontë Hudnott - Flute

Premiered at ECA Degree Show Interconnect Concert in partnership with the SCO, June 2019.
https://www.sco.org.uk/creative-learning/current-projects/1355-interconnect

Brink(Scottish Chamber Orchestra)

Commissioned by SoundFestival, premiered on November 1st 2019 at SoundFestival, Lemon Tree, Aberdeen, and recorded by BBC Radio 3 (https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/live:bbc_radio_three).

Performed by Any Enemy:
Guera Maunder (violin)
Alison MacDonald (cello)
Catherine O’Rourke (flute)
Fiona Gordon (oboe)
Lucy Webster(bassoon)
Pauline Black (trumpet)
Brodie McCash and Peter Ney(percussion)
Aden Mazur (piano) 
Pete Stollery (conductor)

Based around the poem To Glenesk by the North East writer Helen Cruickshank, this piece is an exploration of the glen and a landscape which has been my home and childhood playground for the last twenty-three years. It combines a simple strathspey-like tune with the playfulness of childhood memories, but also strives to evoke a sense of the ice, wind and cold and the natural elements around which my young life revolved. Overall the work is tinged with a sense of emptiness and longing – both my own yearning for the place which I know so dearly, but also a lamentation for the change and depopulation which has occurred there in the last one hundred years. Cruickshank’s poem resonates very personally with me and my intention has been to weave her prose through a musical tapestry of memory, nature and landscape.

To Glenesk... (Any Enemy, Sound Festival (excerpt))

Recorded in rehearsal, Edinburgh University String Orchestra, April 2019.

Miscellaneous (Edinburgh University String Orchestra (excerpt/rehearsal))

Premiered on YouTube as part of Red Note Ensemble's Digital Noisy Nights series, April 2020.

Written for and performed by Tom Hunter.

“This is the river. Water, that strong white stuff, one of the four elemental mysteries, can here be seen at its origins. Like all profound mysteries, it is so simple that it frightens me. It wells from the rock, and flows away. For unnumbered years it has welled from the rock, and flowed away. It does nothing, absolutely nothing, but be itself.” 
― Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain

In embarking on writing this piece, and then remembering this quote from Nan Shepherd, I recalled that very particular experience when one is out hiking, and then completely unannounced from underground comes the gurgle and giggle of a baby stream just setting out on its long journey to the ocean. Its surface overgrown with bracken, heather and grass, it makes the most fantastic deep bubbling and gurgling sound, and if you follow it down a little, it will momentarily appear, giggling as you chase it and then disappear again, returning to its clandestine gabble and gurgle.

This Is The River (Solo Marimba, Red Note Ensemble)

Inspired by Creag Meagaidh Scottish National Heritage reserve, in the Highlands of Scotland.

Music/Sound/Voice - Georgina MacDonell Finlayson
Text - Molly MacDonell Finlayson

Once held as snow and glacier, water has shaped and made the landscape of Creag Meagaidh on a scale we can barely comprehend. Now it flows away and returns in a never ending cycle, an unassuming but vital carrier of messages and stories - an eye in the landscape. Perhaps the landscape has its own physical and emotional consciousness, with its own memories and musings, experiences, textures and identities. ‘In my mind, I found parallels with the process of human existence: from the touch based, un-self aware formations of babyhood, to a more reflective/self acknowledging state of adulthood - but ultimately a vulnerability’ says Molly.

In response to Molly’s text, I wanted to convey a sense of the unfathomable transformation and journey of Creag Meagaidh - once existing as cold hard ice and rock, and now transformed into peak and corrie, burn and loch. I was drawn to the idea of this landscape murmuring its experiences - water, bird, grass, bog and fungus always in deep conversation. Musically, this felt like it should be a sort of semi-improvised soliloquy, working a lot with natural and found sound - glaciers cracking and melting, rock being drawn across slate, hummed harmonies and lullaby-like melody. I wanted to create a soundscape and texture that somehow reflected this idea of experiencing transformation, of stories carried by water, of being a landscape.

GEORGINA MACDONELL FINLAYSON is a musician, composer and community arts practitioner from the North East of Scotland. Her work meanders between and smooshes together everything from traditional and contemporary classical styles, to sound design, spoken word and electroacoustic composition. She also takes great interest in Scottish history, ethnomusicology, landscape, cultural geography, and throughout her work seeks to find ways music and art can help to tackle the climate crisis.

MOLLY MACDONELL FINLAYSON is a costume maker and textile artist with wide ranging experience in opera, theatre, dance, film/tv and community arts. More personal work is inspired by people and stories, colour and texture, music, words, walking in urban and remote places, life drawing, dress and textile history and the urgent need for ways of living sustainably.

'I Am' - (electroacoustic - spoken word)

Scottish musician, composer, sound designer and environmentalist.

Georgina MacDonell Finlayson is a musician, composer and community arts practitioner from the North East of Scotland. She enjoys a varied portfolio of composing, performing (violin/fiddle) and teaching in both classical and traditional styles, and has a particular interest in multi-disciplinary performance.

As a composer, she has had works performed by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Red Note Ensemble, Any Enemy, broadcast on BBC Radio 3's New Music Show and performed at Soundfestival. In 2019 she curated and performed the music for Miss Lindsay’s Secret, a theatre show premiered at the Scottish International Storytelling Festival. Her work meanders between and smooshes together everything from traditional and contemporary classical styles, to sound design, spoken word and electroacoustic composition.

Alongside composing and performing, Georgina has extensive experience as an instrumental teacher and community arts practitioner, involving theatre/puppetry, dance, storytelling, exhibition curation, installation and archival research. She also takes great interest in Scottish history, ethnomusicology, landscape, cultural geography, and throughout her work seeks to find ways music and art can help to tackle the climate crisis.

Georgina MacDonell Finlayson

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