The inaugural Atlantic Islands Festival on Argyll’s Isle of Luing, organised by the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics, is in progress. The island is full and the living room of the event’s imagineer, Norman Bissell, has become the de facto Festival Club. Sleep is a discard.

The event has pulled strongly together the slate island communities of Luing, Seil, Easdale and Lunga, with others coming from fellow Atlantic Islands, from Northern Ireland, Stirling, Ayrshire and from as far south as Bath.

Islands, monasteries, walks and lichens

Thirty people chose to go on the boat trip to Eileach an Naoimh in the Garvellachs, with transports provided by the Outdoor Centre at Rubha Fiola on Lunga. They sat in the beehive cells and the ruined monastery, experiencing some of the isolation of the Celtic monks, like Brendan – whose presence is not historically confirmed but pointed to by the naming of the nearby isle, Brendan’s Retreat.

The guided walk to the lichen-rich Ballachuan Hazel Woods, led by Richard Wesley of the Seil Natural History Group (with a membership of 90+ including high level expertise in a variety of fields) was another success and a first for Richard. It’s always rained when he has led a walk to Ballachuan. This time the rain stayed away.

The premiere of the Atlantic Islands Suite

A major event in the programme and a fully deserved success was the premiere on Wednesday 8th July of The Atlantic Islands Suite created by geopoet Norman Bissell (himself) and composer Mark Sheridan. It was performed on the night by the two men with Aidan O’Rourke and Lori Watson on fiddle and percussion and Margaret Bennett on Gaelic song and percussion.

Norman Bissel, in reading his poem, Slate, as part of the performance had the planned-but-suddenly-living experience of hearing his words surrounded by the sound of slate itself.

Mark Sheridan had built a slate sculpture in the Hall at Cullipool on Luing which had attracted curious attention during the early days of the festival. On Wednesday night it came into its own as the musical instrument it was designed to be – and Sheridan played it, along with the keyboards. The structure offered sharp percussive sounds from the slate and hollow echoing resonances from the air spaces built into it with intent by Mark Sheridan. O’Rourke, Watson and Bennett had additional pieces of slate to contribute other composed percussion to the piece.

The audience was mesmerised, enchanted – as were the creators and performers. Live performance has its own mysteries. We tend to think that each time something is performed it’s simply an act of repetition. It is not. It is a separate act of  creation. Feelings, capabilities, instruments, voices, movements, audiences, contexts are contributors to any live performance and these vary, sometimes widely, between performance and performance.

It is the singularity of the moment that gives live performance its enduring draw for audiences and its terrors for performers. The Atlantic Islands Suite is part of the programme at the Tartan Heart Festival at Belladrum in a months time. That will prove the point. It should be another success but it will be very different. On Wednesday night the piece came alive in the place that inspired it. Belladrum is not that pace and the piece will speak diferently there. It wll be interesting to know exactly what happens.

See BBC Alba at 8,00pm tonight (10th July)

BBC Alba have been admirably quick off the mark in homing in on the unique inventiveness of the Atlantic Islands Festival. Cameraman Andreas Wolff arrived to record the Atlantic Islands Suite and stayed to go to Eileach an Naoimh the next day. Tonight (Friday 10th July) there will be a 2-3 minute clip from the festival on the channel at 8.00pm. (BBC ALBA is available on Sky channel 168 and on Freesat channel 110 – and programmes can be viewed on the BBC’s iPlayer for 7 days after first transmission.)

The legacy?

Already the Atlantic Islands Festival and the collaborative thinking that has inspired it has produced a variety of legacies – some concrete, some in planning. Curious? You should be. And you’ll have to wait until we publish a retrospective on the event. You will be impressed. Luing hopes you will be inspired. We wouldn’t bet against it.

Related Posts

• Argyll’s Atlantic Islands on the move (2)
• Luing’s inaugural Atlantic Islands Festival (0)
• Luing’s Atlantic Islands Festival – connecting people to place (1)
• The (Homecoming) Flight of the Arctic Tern (1)
• Luing fixed link cheapest and most expensive option (2)

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