🪴Come hear plants play the organ and raise money for South Seeds🪴
In collaboration with the wider community and natural environment of Pollokshields, Strathbungo and Govanhill, St Ninian’s, Pollokshields is proud to present Improvisations on Creation and Climate, a series of two concerts on September 25th and October 2nd marking the ecumenical Season of Creation.
Improvisations on Creation and Climate will feature a number of Glasgow-based musicians utilising the local environment and the built form of St Ninians Gothic-revival church to reflect the human and non-human capacity for adaptation amidst climate breakdown through sound and song. Using a unique digital and acoustic set-up which capitalises on the natural resonance of the church, musicians will improvise off of the biofeedback signals from locally-gathered plants with a Glasgow-designed specialist music synthesiser. These biofeedback signals will be captured and fed into the church’s digital organ, creating a musical ecosystem where plants will ‘play’ the organ, through which voice, electronic instruments, and Scottish smallpipes will be interwoven.
The concerts will last approximately 1.5 hours each. The concert on September 25th will reflect on the work of St Hildegard of Bingen, specifically on the themes of viriditas, proto-feminist consciousness and creativity. The October 2nd concert will reflect on St Francis of Asssi’s Canticle of the Creatures, ecology and concern for the poor.
Admission to the concerts is free, with a recommended donation of £10 per person to the fuel poverty and environmental charity South Seeds. No one turned away for lack of funds.
Genre Tags: Choral; Ambient; Experimental Electronic; Folk
Featuring:
Local Flora 🌿🌱🪴
David Hanson – David Hanson is a multi-disciplinary town planner, civic designer and musician. Trained in theology and town planning, his creative and professional practice is rooted in rhythmanalysis, which can facilitate greater sensitivity to human and non-human patterns of activity while supporting the design of ecologically and socially just cities and landscapes.
Dan Brown – Driven by an innately curious nature, and his capacity to absorb and evolve, Dan Brown has combined the medley of influences from the thriving Glasgow music scene, with inspiration from regular trips into the vast vistas of the Scottish highlands to become a versatile multi-instrumentalist and composer. Dan’s writing is musically ‘nomadic’, blurring and blending the lines between genres, and merging an eclectic mix of indie folk, ambient electronica, jazz and traditional Celtic music to create a distinctive sound of warm timbres and textures, with strong melodies tinged with nostalgia.
Anny Leigh – Anny Leigh is a not any old singer songwriter, though the depth and honesty of her lyrics belies a maturity perhaps beyond her years. A born performer, her gigs combine the joy of feel-good pop anthems with the kind of rawness and intimacy more suited to folk.
Duende Soundsystem – Duende as a project began in 2022 as a Latin focussed club night. It has since grown into a Glasgow regular and provides a space in the city’s nightlife for Afro-Latin, Carribean and carnival sounds. Slowly over years, with a lot of help from many many people, we built a soundsystem – which was originally called Zazim, then briefly Chubby’s Hi Fi, and now Duende. The soundsystem is a powerful community tool for bringing people together and sharing love of music, dance and collective joy. The central intention of any Duende event is to create and share uplifting, positive, unifying vibrations.