Scottish Chamber Orchestra announces new season and Craigmillar residency

Cellist Philip Higham is just one of the musicians who will be taking part in the SCO's new community residency in Craigmillar

Never has it seemed so important for professional musicians and ensembles to reinforce their value to society than the present moment. As the structural and economic recovery from Covid cautiously begins, the need to reinvigorate arts community initiatives is just as critical as bringing regular audiences back into the city centre concert halls.

That’s the clear message coming from the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, which has just announced one of its biggest, most comprehensive community residencies ever alongside the launch of a Scotland-wide concert season.

The former is centred on the Craigmillar area in Edinburgh and is an extensive intergenerational community initiative lasting five years; the latter marks a return to regular live concerts, scheduled – as is likely to be the case with most orchestras – till December this year. Concert information for early 2022 will be forthcoming as 2021 draws to a close.

Until then, the SCO will present 28 performances across six Scottish towns and cities with such notable artists as principal conductor Maxim Emelyanychev, Nicola Benedetti, baritone Benjamin Appl, Russian-Lithuanian pianist Lukas Geniušas, and conductors Mark Wigglesworth and Peter Whelan. Three new works – from Jay Capperauld, Anna Clyne and Peter Eötvös – will be premiered. And while Covid forced orchestras into embracing online digital presentation, a positive outcome sees the retention of that as a selective, additional feature in the forthcoming season.

As for the Craigmillar project, it aims to be the evolutionary offspring of the prototype three-year Wester Hailes creative programme that ran from 2017-20. “That one grew as it went along,” says Kirsteen Davidson Kelly, the SCO’s director of creative learning. It also came to a slightly diluted conclusion as a result of Covid, which in turn delayed the start of the Craigmillar programme, which was due to have launched earlier this year.

Countering that disappointment was the unplanned opportunity this gave Davidson Kelly and her team to extend consultation and planning with the various Craigmillar interest groups. “We’re going into this one having really tried to understand what elements of the community we can best address,” she promises of the forthcoming blitz of creative workshops and events that will embrace all age groups, from nursery to secondary school children to adult residents and the groundbreaking SCO ReConnect initiative aimed at dementia sufferers within the care sector.

It hits the ground running on 14 and 15 August with two launch events at the 2021 Craigmillar and Niddrie Festival – a revival of the once highly-successful Craigmillar Festival, which last took place in 2015. One features SCO cellist Philip Higham accompanying an installation at the recently opened Craigmillar Now arts centre; the other, in Craigmillar Castle Grounds, features Paul Rissmann’s fun-packed entertainment for kids, Sir Scallywag and the Golden Underpants, narrated by Children’s TV presenter Chris Jarvis.

Of the nine longer-term projects, Craigmillar Voices is completely new. “We’ve not done a vocal one before,” Davidson Kelly explains. “Our consultations with local groups raised the issue of a lack of intergenerational working, which this particular project, for children and adults, helps to address.” So will two pivotal community musicals planned for 2024 and 2026. “Craigmillar is an extraordinary place in terms of social arts events,” she adds. “These will be key landmarks arising from our residency.

As for the SCO players, used to high-level performance and fresh from their recent smash-hit all-Mozart programme under Emelyanychev at the BBC Proms, is this an area of activity that genuinely stimulates them? “I think for many of these brilliant players this is seen as equally essential work,” says Davidson Kelly. “It’s such a good counterpoint to what they do on stage. There they do what they are told and do it to the highest standards. This work involves much freer creativity and close-up interaction, as well as the training and insight they receive in applying music as a social stimulus.”

Sounds like the perfect balance.

Full information on the SCO’s Craigmillar Residency & the Autumn 21 concert season is available at www.sco.org.uk

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