event details

"Conflict and Resolution" featuring the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

Saturday 17th January 2009, 7.30pm

City Halls : Grand Hall

The centrepiece of tonight’s programme will be the world première of Conflict and Resolution by David Heath, which celebrates the life of the pioneering architect, designer and painter Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and is the fruit of a two-year collaboration between musicians from Scotland and Catalonia.

Transcending the boundaries between traditional and classical music, the piece is strongly influenced by the great Catalan cellist/composer Pablo Casals, while rooted in Celtic and Catalan folk idioms, making innovative use of orchestral space to reflect Mackintosh’s experience of both cultures during his lifetime.

Variously inspired by modern jazz, rock, rap and Celtic music, David Heath has been described by The Herald as “the UK’s most outrageous yet accessible contemporary composer”. Performing with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra will be Scottish soloists Mary Ann Kennedy (clarsach), Shona Mooney (fiddle) and Rory Campbell (bagpipes), with Catalan musicians François Ragot (cello), Vincent Vidalou (tenora), Frédéric Guisset (tible, tamborí) and Francesc Sans (sac de gemecs).