Mr McFall's Chamber

Five picks from Celtic Connections 2012

Featuring Zoe Muth, Jack Bruce, King Creosote and Jon Hopkins and Vieux Farka Touré

6 Jan 2012

Zoe Muth & The Lost High Rollers The year in Americana 2011 belongs to Gillian Welch and the release of her album The Harrow & the Harvest, but amongst a promising field of young female country singers, Zoe Muth stands out. With her ear for an instant…

The Okavango Macbeth: Alexander McCall Smith’s 'Shakespeare and baboons' opera

The author/librettist teams up with Tom Cunningham and Robert McFall

24 Mar 2011

Alexander McCall Smith’s inspiration to write an opera based on Shakespeare’s Macbeth isn’t the first. Verdi was certainly there before him, but what makes McCall Smith’s The Okavango Macbeth decidedly different is that the characters are all baboons.

Mr McFall’s Chamber

Tribute to Scottish techno-folk composer

12 Aug 2010

In a concert featuring the music from their latest album, Mr McFall’s Chamber present a programme of the same name, ‘Birds and Beasts’, celebrating the musical legacy of ‘folk meets techno’ composer Martyn Bennett, and including a couple of pieces by…

Nuala Kennedy - Tune In

12 May 2010

(Compass Records) From her early days at Edinburgh College of Art, and nights in Sandy Bells pub playing flute with the capital’s crosssover music scene, young Kennedy’s exploratory curiosity has always led her away from her musical roots in the…

Mr McFall's Chamber - Birds & Beasts

4 May 2010

(Delphian Records) A quintet of classical string players both thinking and playing out of the box, a jazz pianist and two drummers, and a piper with both folk and jazz leanings – it can only be Mr McFall’s. The music is equally eclectic – two…

Mr McFall’s Chamber with Michael Marra

5 Mar 2009

COLLABORATION If there is one thing predictable about Mr McFall’s Chamber, it is that they are never predictable. Every performance brings something completely out of the ordinary. For their latest musical adventure, the core string quartet is joined…

Celtic Connections - Michael Nyman

22 Jan 2009

CELTIC CONNECTIONS Despite his ongoing frustration at being shunned by the BBC Proms, Michael Nyman remains the most widely heard of contemporary ‘serious’ composers in the UK. An early experimentalist in the 60s avant-garde, Nyman is one of the very…

Dialogues

13 Nov 2008

Informatics: it’s the future. This study of ‘the structure, algorithms, behaviour, and interactions of natural and artificial computational systems’ has been around since 1957, when German computer scientist Karl Steinbuch coined the word, ‘Informatik’.

Cycles - Mr McFall's Chamber with Thomas Strønen

13 Nov 2008

Out Of The Blue Drill Hall, Wed 12 November. Midway through the second set of this collaboration between Scotland’s equivalent of The Penguin Café Orchestra and Norwegian percussionist Thomas Strønen, an ebullient bike instructor comes up onstage to…

Mr McFall's Chamber - Aye: An Affirmation of Martyn Bennett

Fitting tribute to a Scots music pioneer

21 Aug 2008

The eclectic and innovative Mr McFall’s Chamber will be gracing the Spiegel Tent with their own particular interpretation of the music of the late Martyn Bennett who died tragically in 2005 leaving an inspirational musical legacy. Consisting of a core…

Mr McFall’s Chamber - Aye: An Affirmation of Martyn Bennett

13 Mar 2008

CLASSICAL Brunton Theatre, Musselburgh, Wed 19 Mar; Eastwood Park Theatre, Giffnock, Thu 27 Mar Whether playing to a packed hall or an empty one, musicians bond through the shared experience of being there and doing it together. When legendary piper…

Aye: An Affirmation of Martyn Bennett

28 Feb 2008

Martyn Bennett changed the face of Scottish music, marrying the high octane waves of the 90s dance scene with jazz beats, classical strings and his native Gaelic traditions. Now, the life and work of the performer and composer are set to be celebrated…

Mr Mcfall’s Chamber

Mr Mcfall’s Chamber: An Everyday Occurrence

27 Mar 2007

NEW OPERA Even though 250 of them are featured in the classical listings in this issue of The List alone, the behind-the-scenes story of what it’s really like being an orchestral musician rarely gets much exposure away from the immediate ranks of…

Mr McFall's Chamber

Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, Tue 20 Feb; Tolbooth, Sti

12 Feb 2007

CONTEMPORARY CLASSICAL The eclectic Edinburgh-based ensemble open another new chapter in their cross-genre explorations in this ‘New Music from Newcastle’ project. Robert McFall was not only keen to get involved but recruit some local talent as…