Tryst and Connla at Celtic Connections - 5 star Review!
With three of our National Piping Centre Tutors - John Mulhearn, Finlay MacDonald and Ross Ainslie - all part of the brand new piping collective, TRYST, we were delighted to see their first show recieved 5 stars from The Scotsman
Tryst/Connla *****
Same time, same place, the following night saw another full house for the debut by Tryst, a line-up of ten top Scottish pipers, premièring specially-written music by each player in turn, adapting the ceremonial, commemorative and meditative traditions of classical piobaireachd to a 21st century context. The composers’ themes ranged from the plight of refugees to Highland land-rights campaigns; the excesses of consumerism to the importance of home, while the resulting five-minute pieces capitalised fully and thrillingly on contemporary developments in bagpipe technique and repertoire, complemented in several cases by artfully deployed electronic beats and samples. With more than half of the performers doubling periodically on other instruments – including whistles, keyboards, guitar and accordion, as well as canntaireachd vocals – the arrangements were as varied as the compositions themselves, while all sharing in the central, utterly compelling majesty of massed, masterfully deployed Highland pipes, at once viscerally primal and stunningly sophisticated.
You can read the full review of the event here on The Scotsman