Archive Trails
In January 2011, three bold stravaigers – Alasdair Roberts, Aileen Campbell, and Drew Wright – set forth upon a twelve-week commissioning residency in The School of Scottish Studies Archives at The University of Edinburgh.
This site tracks their progress as they listen to tapes, sift through photos, conduct their own fieldwork and begin to develop new performances from their findings.
On tour October 2011!
Oct 13 : Peebles, Eastgate Arts Centre
Oct 14 : Perth Concert Hall
Oct 15 : Cupar Arts Festival
Oct 16 : Edinburgh, Scottish Storytelling Centre
Oct 17 : Aviemore, Old Bridge Inn
Oct 18 : Tobermory, An Tobar
Oct 19 : Rosehall, The Achness Hotel
Oct 23 : London, Cafe OTO
Oct 28 : Glasgow, CCA
Curated and produced by Tracer Trails.
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© 2011 Tracer Trails
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20 posts tagged alasdair
Alasdair Roberts and Shane Connolly have been building puppets for their reworked and expanded version of Galoshins.
Berrypickers of Blair
A few weeks ago I wrote about my imminent visit to Blairgowrie, home of the fabled berryfields which were eulogised in song by the late, great Belle Stewart. I’d been invited to a berry pickers’ ceilidh in the town hall there, and was interested to find out more about the workforce of today. Well, it turns out that the days when Scotland’s travelling folk toiled there are gone - the pickers nowadays consist predominantly of young eastern European students (which can only be a good thing both for them and for the local community.)
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Belle Stewart sings The Berryfields o Blair, recorded by Maurice Fleming for the School of Scottish Studies in 1954.
Berryfields
Esteemed reader - I would like to draw your attention to a recently released CD on Greentrax Records (CDTRAX9024) in the Scottish Tradition series: ‘Scottish Tradition 24: Songs and Ballads from Perthshire Field Recordings of the 1950s’.
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Diary Room, Day 78
Tomorrow I am going to buy some air drying clay from which Shane and I will model the heads of the glove puppets to feature in our interpretation of the Scottish folk play ‘Galoshins’, which will constitute a part of my Archive Trails work. This is a new art form for me but it’s one with which Shane is familiar, so I’m looking forward to working with him on it.
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Plans are crystallising
Today Shane Connolly and I met to discuss plans for our staging of ‘Galoshins’ for the Archive Trails tour. It was a helpful process to show him the script which I had collated as it currently stands and discuss it in some length. We discussed staging, characterisation, props, sound effects and musical accompaniment among other things; without wanting to reveal too much, plans are crystallising and becoming more focussed.
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A tour and other plans
My proposal for Archive Trails has now been submitted. Next month work will recommence in earnest on the creative side of the project, which I anticipate with some glee.
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Taking Stock
Just got back from a brief trip to Finland and Estonia playing music with Alastair Caplin and Stevie Jones. A bit of travelling time to formulate thoughts about the Archive Trails project… and a marketplace in Helsinki yielded a beautiful object, an item which might make it into the work I am producing.
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Scottish Mask and Puppet Centre
On 9th March, the archive trail led me to Glasgow’s leafy West End, to the Scottish Mask and Puppet Centre. Shane Connolly of Sokobauno, with whom I’ll be working on the project, had invited me along for a meeting with the Centre’s founder, Dr Malcolm Knight.
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Three Dee
A lot of my work for this project so far has been of a rather intangible nature – ruminating, pondering, cogitating. Listening, talking, thinking. These have all been very useful and important strategies. And most of my life’s artistic work so far has been similarly aetherial – the creation of sound, the crafting of melody and word. Pushing notes from my larynx and coaxing tones from steel strings. But I’ve come to realise that what I would like to achieve as an end result is something more tangible, physical, three-dimensional.
