Faced with a new concert venue – a vast and beautiful walled garden – John Harris and the Lammermuir festival had to decide how to fill it with sound. Anthony Braxton’s colossal composition was the irresistible solution.
Working in contemporary music, I am used to eyebrows being raised by friends and family when I answer their seemingly innocent dinnertime question, “What are you up to at the moment?”. My responses over the years have ranged from “staging an opera about alien abduction underneath Concorde” to “ensuring that a soprano can get a tattoo live on stage while she sings”. However, I’ve never previously experienced anything like the familial spluttering in response to my most recent answer – “putting on a concert with 100 tuba players in a garden outside Edinburgh”.
I do understand some of their surprise, but to be honest 100 tubas seemed like such a logical solution to the problem I was given that I’m not sure I understand it entirely! James Waters, artistic director of the Lammermuir festival in East Lothian, Scotland – and regular partner-in-crime for some of Red Note Ensemble’s wilder productions, including the aforementioned opera under Concorde – phoned me one day last year to say “I have found an interesting – and very beautiful – place to put on a concert. I just don’t have a clue what music to do. Come and have a look!”
