Scottish Opera is the national opera company of Scotland, and one of the five national performing arts companies of Scotland. Founded in 1962 and based in Glasgow, it is the largest performing arts organisation in Scotland.
Martyn Bennett was a Canadian-Scottish musician who was influential in the evolution of modern Celtic fusion, a blending of traditional Celtic and modern music. He was a piper, violinist, composer and producer. He was an innovator and his compositions crossed musical and cultural divides. Sporting dreadlocks at the height of his performing career, his energetic displays led to descriptions such as "the techno piper". Diagnosis of serious illness at the age of thirty curtailed his live performances, although he completed a further two albums in the studio. He died fifteen months after release of his fifth album Grit.
This is a summary of 2001 in music in the United Kingdom.
Sir James Loy MacMillan, is a Scottish classical composer and conductor.
Suhayl Saadi is a physician, author and dramatist based in Glasgow, Scotland. His varied literary output includes novels, short stories, anthologies of fiction, song lyrics, plays for stage and radio theatre, and wisdom pieces for The Dawn Patrol, the Sarah Kennedy show on BBC Radio 2.
Patrick Doyle is a Scottish composer, best known for his film scores. During his 50-year career in film, television and theatre he has composed the scores for over 60 feature films. A longtime collaborator of actor-director Kenneth Branagh, he is known for his work on films such as Henry V, Sense and Sensibility, Hamlet, Carlito's Way, and Gosford Park, as well as Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Thor, Brave, Cinderella,Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile.
Sarah Frances Beamish is a British composer and violist. Her works include chamber, vocal, choral and orchestral music. She has also worked in the field of music, theatre, film and television, as well as composing for children and for her local community.
The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra is a Scottish broadcasting symphony orchestra based in Glasgow. One of five full-time orchestras maintained by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), it is the oldest full-time professional radio orchestra in Scotland. The orchestra is based at City Halls in Glasgow.
Sir Donald Cameron Runnicles OBE HonFRSE is a Scottish conductor.
Erik William Chisholm was a Scottish composer, pianist, organist and conductor sometimes known as "Scotland's forgotten composer". According to his biographer, Chisholm "was the first composer to absorb Celtic idioms into his music in form as well as content, his achievement paralleling that of Bartók in its depth of understanding and its daring", which led some to give him the nickname "MacBartók". As composer, performer and impresario, he played an important role in the musical life of Glasgow between the two World Wars and was a founder of the Celtic Ballet and, together with Margaret Morris, created the first full-length Scottish ballet, The Forsaken Mermaid. After World War II he was Professor and Head of the South African College of Music at the University of Cape Town for 19 years until his death. Chisholm founded the South African College of Music opera company in Cape Town and was a vital force in bringing new operas to Scotland, England and South Africa. By the time of his death in 1965, he had composed over a hundred works.
Gareth Patrick Williams is an Irish composer based at Edinburgh College of Art. He was the first composer in residence for Scottish Opera from 2012 to 2015. His work spans from opera and music theatre to chamber music.
James Pickering Kendall FRS FRSE was a British chemist.
Phamie Gow is a composer, singer, harpist, pianist, and recording artist.
Christina Cruikshank Miller FRSE was a Scottish chemist and one of the first five women elected to the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Christina Miller was deaf from childhood and also lost the sight of one eye in a laboratory explosion in 1930. The Christina Miller Building within Edinburgh University's Kings Buildings is named in her honour, as is Christina Miller Hall at Heriot-Watt University.
Edinburgh Grand Opera is Scotland's oldest existing grand opera company, founded in 1955 by Richard Telfer. This Edinburgh Music Society is run by its non-professional chorus with advice and support from the professional Artistic and Musical Directors and Designers it engages. It was originally known as the Edinburgh Grand Opera Group, and it has also been referred to as Edinburgh Grand Opera Company. Its soloists are a mixture of amateur, semi-professional and professional singers from Scotland and abroad, many of whom are students or graduates from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. It was the first amateur company to perform at the Edinburgh Festival Theatre.
Scottish opera is a subgenre of Scottish music. This article deals with three separate, but overlapping subjects:
Feargus Hetherington is a violinist and violist based in Glasgow. He has performed from an early age throughout Scotland and abroad. He arranges music, teaches and presents music workshops and seminars.
Classical music in Scotland is all art music in the Western European classical tradition, between its introduction in the eighteenth century until the present day. The development of a distinct tradition of art music in Scotland was limited by the impact of the Scottish Reformation on ecclesiastical music from the sixteenth century. Concerts, largely composed of "Scottish airs", developed in the seventeenth century and classical instruments were introduced to the country. Music in Edinburgh prospered through the patronage of figures including the merchant Sir John Clerk of Penicuik. The Italian style of classical music was probably first brought to Scotland by the cellist and composer Lorenzo Bocchi, who travelled to Scotland in the 1720s. The Musical Society of Edinburgh was incorporated in 1728. Several Italian musicians were active in the capital in this period and there are several known Scottish composers in the classical style, including Thomas Erskine, 6th Earl of Kellie, the first Scot known to have produced a symphony.
Karen Cargill is a Scottish operatic mezzo-soprano singer. She has performed with the Metropolitan Opera and at the Edinburgh International Festival.
New Voices is an award for emerging composers made by the Celtic Connections festival annually since 1998. It is a musical commission which enables recipients to compose and perform a significant new suite of music of about forty-five minutes, based on traditional themes. Usually there are three commissions each year, with each composer performing their work at a lunchtime concert on one of the three Sundays of the festival. The funding provides for the musician both to develop the work, and to direct its performance, typically by five to ten musicians, at its première. In the earlier years, the composer was invited to further develop the work and revisit it at the festival the next year, but this is no longer practised.
