Raymond MacDonald

2012 Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra Festival

Highlights of GIO Fest 2012 include new work from Jim O' Rourke and Shetland Improvisers Orchestra

This year Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra celebrates a glorious decade of making it up as they go along. Bringing together musicians from a range of backgrounds - jazz, classical, experimental, electronic - GIO has explored a range of creative approaches…

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…

Alister Spence - Raymond Macdonald: Stepping Between The Shadows

Collaboration ranges from gentle lyricism to knotty abstraction

(Rufus Records) Australian pianist Alister Spence and our own Raymond MacDonald have been working together in various contexts for some time, and this duo recording reflects a strong musical empathy between the two musicians. The seven pieces for…

Reel Science events programme among highlights of Edinburgh Film Festival

Tomboy, My Brothers and Project Nim among film highlights

After my fearless leader’s less-than-generous appraisal of this aged Festival’s opening night, I’m hoping to bring a little bit of love for EIFF back to these web pages. Admittedly, the pared-down nature of this year’s Festival is most noticeable in the…

Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra

Large-ensemble improvisation can sometimes be a tentative affair, fidgety rather than full-blooded, but GIO’s performance, the first in the Soundlab series of experimental music concerts, was a fitting tribute to the ‘joyful and life-enhancing sound’ of…

Peter Nicolson and Raymond Macdonald - Streetlevel

(Iorram Records) More adventures in free improvisation from this Glasgow-based, musician-run label. Nicholson’s cello and the alto and soprano saxophones of MacDonald are deployed in characteristically free ranging fashion, coaxing a broad spectrum…

Continental shift at the Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival

This year sees a fresh influx of New European Jazz

While American jazz remains a central plank of the Edinburgh International Jazz and Blues Festival programme, its European counterpart is still well-represented. The Festival is an opportunity to both welcome back seasoned artists (or in the case of…

Edinburgh festival highlights: The top 30 shows

August’s finest entertainment at a glance

We bring you a selection of the best shows at Edinburgh this year across all the festivals, including barnstorming retelling of the Goethe story Faust, former Talking Head David Byrne in experimental mood, The Wire's creator David Simon and theatre…

Scottish Jazz Expo at the Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival

A showcase of new bands and fresh collaborations

Like the Homegrown weekend at the Glasgow Jazz Festival, the Scottish Jazz Expo is aimed at raising the profile of our country's musicians. This year’s programme includes an impressive range of the most exciting developments here, alongside projects…

Aoife Mannix & Raymond MacDonald - Other Voices

JAZZ/POETRY Jazz and poetry has a lengthy if often problematic history of interaction, and remains a specialised taste. This collaboration between Irish poet and Glasgow saxophonist originated by accident. The two were brought together for an…

Burt MacDonald with Lol Coxhill

Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival

A reunion with free jazz, lyrical flourishes and popcorn machines. One of Scotland’s most adventurous jazz groups, the Burt MacDonald Quintet are reuniting with Lol Coxhill. A legend of the soprano saxophone, Coxhill has worked with the band on five…

Le Weekend

JAZZ Tolbooth, Stirling, Fri 23–Sun 25 May With Triptych now but a memory, the eclecticism of Le Weekend is brought into even sharper focus as an important vehicle for music that eludes the attention of more conventional mainstream events. This year’s…

London & Glasgow Improvisers Orchestras - Separately & Together

JAZZ (Emanem Records) For reasons both practical and aesthetic large ensembles have been the exception rather than the rule in the world of free improvisation. Both the London and the rather younger Glasgow Improvisers Orchestras have happily flown in…

Classic Anxiety Dream

IMPROV TATSUYA NAKATANI, RAYMOND MACDONALD AND NEIL DAVIDSON Classic Anxiety Dream @ The Meadow Bar, Edinburgh, Mon 18 Jun (Image: Nakatani & Davidson) Edinburgh last hosted a weekly improv night in the mid-1990s, when Lindsay…