Music, Mark Fisher

Ten collaborative music, theatre and film projects from Scotland

Including Speed of Light, Pass the Spoon and Whatever Gets You Through the Night

Pass the Spoon. It sounded like an unlikely dish, with ingredients including off-beat artist David Shrigley (who wrote the libreto), modernist composer David Fennessy and Magnetic North director Nicholas Bone working with the Red Note Ensemble, but when…

Big Noise - The community orchestra for children under 12

Music group draws inspiration from ‘El Sistema’ philosophy of Venezuela

Musical director Francis Cummings takes his place in front of the 40-strong orchestra and raises his arms, poised to launch into Henry Purcell’s ‘Rondeau’ from the Abdelazar Suite. ‘No counting to three, because that’s for children,’ he says. The…

The tragic number - Fringe shows charting the musicians who died aged 27

Trio of Edinburgh Fringe shows explore the haunted number

John Kielty is sitting in an Edinburgh bar, listing the supernatural properties of the number 27. ‘It’s the cube of three; three being the original magic number,’ he says. ‘The moon orbits the earth every 27 days. The sun revolves on its axis every 27…

Steel Magnolias

Play made famous by big-screen adaptation is slight and horribly sentimental

You should maybe seek a second opinion on this one. Judging by the full house and the warm reception, the Rep’s decision to stage Robert Harling’s play – best known for the big-screen adaptation with Julia Roberts and Dolly Parton – demonstrates a…

Theatre, music and dance highlights from the 2011 Edinburgh International Festival

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Semiramide and King Lear among picks

The Edinburgh International Festival (EIF) has been a benchmark for quality and innovation in the performing arts since its inauguration nearly 65 years ago. This year artistic director Jonathan Mills builds his programme around the multi-faceted…

The avant garde planet of Boguslaw Schaeffer

An 80-year-old Polish polymath is set to be the discovery of the Fringe, says Mark Fisher

Boguslaw Schaeffer reckons he’s living in the year 2048. It’s as plausible a claim as anything else you could say about this extraordinary Polish octogenarian. His name might not be widely known, yet he has led a breathtakingly creative life. As a…

Jen Olive - Warm Robot

(Ape) Putting the quirky into Albuquerque, New Mexico’s Jen Olive creates a delightfully skewed folk-pop hybrid that matches Marina Diamandis robot for robot and has hooks to spare. A typical Olive track takes a hypnotically repeated acoustic guitar…

Giorgio Battistelli's Experimentum Mundi and Fair is Foul, Foul is Fair

Revolutionary sonic collaboration between composers and craftsmen

Giorgio Battistelli is demonstrating the rhythm of a conventional piece of classical music. ‘Peak-peak-peak-peak,’ he counts out. By contrast, he says, the beat of a shoemaker’s hammer is altogether less regular: ‘Tic-tic-tack, tic-tic.’ That was the…

La Didone

‘I developed special software for the last couple of pieces,’ says Elizabeth LeCompte, artistic director of New York avant-garders the Wooster Group. ‘Final Cut Pro and Isadora, you know, I was the initial developer.’ Actually, she was nothing of the…

Part of the furniture

It’s the kind of thing any band could have dreamt up on a boozy night after a gig. ‘Instead of playing our guitars and drums,’ one musician would say, ‘wouldn’t it be great if we all played one big instrument?’ Everyone would agree and, of course, they…

La Didone

For over 30 years, the most unlikely elements have been combined in the Wooster Group’s work. Everything from creaky old B-movies to cutting edge technology have been spliced together to create arresting pieces of theatre.