Arts Diary: Temporary intercity derailment for Peter

THE RSNO’s new music director, conductor Peter Oundjian, talked in his first programme launch this week of a possible festival of contemporary music, modelled on two-week festivals he has been staging with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.

He held it out as a way of getting audiences excited about newly written classical music, which is often a bit of a struggle.

Oundjian will continue to work as Toronto’s music director, while he takes the helm of the Glasgow-based Royal Scottish National Orchestra as well. But as he talked of bringing theatres or museums into a contemporary festival, he spoke airily of how “you can really do a lot in a city like this”.

It provoked squirrel-eyed inquiries from the Embra contingent, who had dutifully boarded the cross-continental train to Glasgow for Oundjian’s spirited first outing for the press, regardless of the promise of a free lunch at the ritzy Blythswood Square Hotel.

Oundjian has had a long-time career in big city orchestras in North America, so talk of cities rather than countries may be forgiven. He hastily corrected himself. Reassuringly, Oundjian actually played a Brahms concerto with an orchestra on the Edinburgh Fringe at the age of about 18, he revealed. In his twenties he played at the Queen’s Hall, later conducting the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in the Edinburgh International Festival in the late 1990s. He could even wittily quote the EIF’s former director, John Drummond.

Naughty Neuk hack

The RSNO’s website was back up and running yesterday after being hit by an apparent hacking attack this month. But the East Neuk Festival website has now been hit, after “rude words” inserted by a hacker activated security settings on Google, blocking search engines from accessing the site. The site is currently down while it’s being fixed, staff say.

Teasing out the lie

The Edinburgh singer-songwriter Kim Edgar releases her second solo album, The Ornate Lie, next month. There’s an Edinburgh launch party at St Mark’s ArtSpace this Saturday followed by gigs in Glasgow and Dunoon.

Scotland on Sunday described her first outing as “very moving, literate, allusive and expressively sung”. Her songs this time around draw on topics including “child neglect, the objectification of women, love, helplessness and mortality”.

Backing musicians include Steven Polwart on guitar and vocals from sister Karine Polwart, another accomplished singer-songwriter. Polwart has her first gig in Edinburgh in two years on Wednesday at Greyfriars Kirk, with Steven also playing.