http://www.rednoteensemble.com
Red Note Ensemble is Scotland’s contemporary music ensemble. We develop, perform, present and find new audiences for new music within Scotland, the UK and internationally. The Ensemble was founded in 2008 by Scottish cellist Robert Irvine, and is directed by John Harris (Chief Executive and Artistic Co-Director) and Robert Irvine (Artistic Co-Director). The Ensemble’s leader is violinist Jacqueline Shave. Red Note performs the established classics of contemporary music, commissions new music, develops the work of new and emerging composers from around the world, and finds new spaces and new ways of performing and presenting contemporary music to attract new audiences both within Scotland and elsewhere.
Our flexible performing ensemble – varying in scale from 4 to 34 people – counts amongst its players some of the very finest performers working in the UK today. Red Note’s busy schedule comprises tours, site-specific work and cross-artform collaborations on large and small scales,locally and internationally, and a highly-developed Access,Engagement and Participation (AEP) programme.
2016 was the year that Red Note truly got out and about. We visited India to develop a new project with singer Sonam Kalra, and then undertook three different international tours in the Autumn: to Canberra and Bermagui in Australia for two weeks of workshops and performances in September with the Griffyn Ensemble; to Belgium and Holland in October and November to perform Andriessen, Kagel and de Simone with I Solisti and Song Circus; and to France in November to tour our new string quartet for invented instruments by François Sarhan, KEIN.
Closer to home (in England) we performed at Cheltenham Festival and the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, and of course we also covered the four corners of Scotland; from the Western Isles to East Lothian, Aberdeenshire to Dumfries and Galloway.
This year we have been privileged to work in partnership with many different talents: Scottish filmmakers Eggbox in the Concorde Hangar at Lammermuir Festival; Simon Callow for Freedom O(r) Speech at sound Festival; the National Theatre of Scotland 1418 NOW and Perth Theatre for the World Première of The 306:Dawn; the Paris Conservatoire and the Helsinki Sibelius Academy for our first international Red Note Advanced Academy at the Lammermuir Festival; start-up entrepreneurs at the Scottish EDGE Awards and students and teachers from Kirkland High School in Leven, Woodfarm, Lochend and Barrhead High Schools in Glasgow and Knox High School in Haddington for our New Music Makers projects.
Red Note is Associate Contemporary Ensemble at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow, an Associate Company of the Traverse Theatre Edinburgh and Associate Ensemble of the sound Festival Aberdeen. Artistic Co-Directors: John Harris (Chief Executive) and Robert Irvine.
Leader: Jacqueline Shave