Community and Creativity are at the heart of The Cumnock Tryst. We know that every individual has the capacity to create something new, often in ways which might be hitherto unimaginable. This project is giving community groups across Cumnock and Doon Valley the opportunity to create a piece of music reflecting their own response to their landscape, social history, community, people and place.
The project has been engaging with people from the community in online workshops with well known photographers, writers, composers and naturalists; and over the next 18 months will be writing music and text with help from professional librettists and composers, and performing all together in the new Barony Hall.
Over an eight-week period, Compose The Environment brought together pupils from Lochnorris Primary School with Sir James MacMillan and music education specialist Naheed Cruickshank to play and develop new music that forges connections to the landscape that surrounds them. The initiative culminated with pupils playing the music they composed - joined by a trio of professional musicians - in a special performance at Barony Hall.
Part of our 2022 Tryst Festival, Blue Sky Counterpoint saw pupils from Hillside School work with composers James MacMillan and Matilda Brown, alongside Drake Music Scotland and singers from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, to create a programme of music they have composed themselves.
Create!
Create! was a new project initiated by The Cumnock Tryst in partnership with Live Music Now Scotland, Hebrides Ensemble, Drake Music Scotland and Daldorch House School (National Autistic Society).
Create! offered the students the opportunity to experience live music in a place where they are comfortable and to start exploring how they might create music themselves, while also allowing the partners to learn more about how to work with people who have autism. The project enriched the pupil’s lives and developed professional learning for a team of staff.
You can find our more about the project from Matilda Brown, who delivered sessions for Create! and listen to the young people’s new work, in our Q&A article HERE.
Our un-auditioned Festival Chorus is made up of local singers who are given the opportunity to work with Chorus Master Andrew McTaggart (Director of Ayr Choral Union and the Greenock Philharmonic Choir) and then directed in a Festival performance by Eamonn Dougan (from The Sixteen). The Chorus forms a key part of our Festival every year performing alongside professional musicians and the Novantae Singers.
Every year we ask for members to sign up to our chorus and we are recruiting for our 2023 Festival Chorus now so sign up now here!
