SCOTLAND’S TOP FIDDLE ORCHESTRA PLAYS SAGE GATESHEAD

TRIBUTE TO NELSON MANDELA.

An extravaganza of Scottish music song and dance comes to Sage Gateshead on Saturday 1^st March, when Scotland’s top fiddle orchestra will be town with around 100 performers. Dancing in the foyer begins at 6.30 pm, with the demonstration team from Newcastle and District RSCDS. The Orchestra takes to the stage at 7.30pm with a programme of lively Scottish dance tunes, slow airs, songs and more reflective pieces. A highlight will include “Nelson Mandela’s Welcome to Glasgow”, which celebrates the great man’s visit with African drumming rhythms, building to a frenzy of fiddles, bagpipes and percussion. This piece was written by Blair Douglas, a founder member of Runrig, to mark the presentation of the freedom of the city of Glasgow to Nelson Mandela. There will be a commemoration of piping in World War One, with solo lowland and highland pipes and orchestra. A tone poem “Orkney Sunset Song” blends a traditional melody, played by Morpeth Pipe Band, with the evening hymn St Clement. Orchestral pieces will include a slow air for solo fiddle and jigs, reels, strathspeys and tone poems. Young dancers from Castle Douglas, tenor and soprano singers, and the inimitable Jim McColl MBE (BBC Beechgrove Garden) as compere will make this a lively, varied and happy night out. Tenor Jamie MacDougall is well known in Scotland as the presenter of the Scottish Proms, and of the BBC radio programmes “Classics Unwrapped” and “Grace Notes”. He specialises in Scottish song, and last performed with the SFO in memorable concert in Sydney Opera House with “Caledon”, three Scottish Tenors. Soprano Debra Stuart has acted as a vocal coach on the BBC’s “Search for Nancy”, is a member of the “The Celtic Divas” and has recently released a solo album entitled “Where the Heart Is”. Conductor Blair Parham recently led the SFO on a tour of major provincial concert halls of China and has been the Orchestra’s principal conductor for the last 3 years as successor to its founder John Mason. Blair has also toured in Australia, New Zealand and North America, including conducting a concert in the White House. The SFO’s show will climax with the whole audience standing to hold hands and sing Auld Lang Syne with the massed players and Pipe Band. The Orchestra is a registered charity, and supports various other charities. There will be a retiring collection for the Great North Air Ambulance after the show.