The Cantilena Festival: chamber music in the Islay bloodstream

Islay is known worldwide for its distinctive single malt whiskies. The annual Cantilena Festival of chamber music uses the whisky network to infiltrate the island communities, with its cadences echoing in 2010 through three distillery venues  – Ardbeg (above), Bruichladdich and Lagavulin – in its total of seven concerts.

The Columba Centre at Bowmore hosts three and this year there is an innovation in the programme. The Outback Art Gallery at Sanaigmore will host an addition to the programme, a shorter afternoon concert of light music on Wednesday 7th July.

The festival runs from 4th-9th July. One of only five chamber music festivals in the UK, Islay brings it to Argyll.

The concerts start at 8.00pm on each night and take place at various venues across the island. This takes the music to the communities of an island with a communal heart.

The evening concerts (dates and details below) will cover a wide range of composers and compositions from the very early (Scarlatti and Vivaldi) to the more romantic (Schumann and Mendelssohn). Traditional works will include Bach’s violin concertos in A Minor and E Major, the superb Ghost and Archduke Piano Trios by Beethoven and the Schumann Piano Quartet.

Islay is a manageable enough size for people to follow the programme to a range of venues – and obviously folk in Bowmore have half the evening programme on their doorstep.

Our famed canniness has probably trained us  to think in terms of choosing a single experience from a programme – but why? With the concerts as accessibie as they would be if they were playing in different venues across a city, there’s no reaons not to hear several of them. There are season tickets to make that an attractive possibility.

Cantilena’s artistic directors are Adrian Shepherd MBE and Angus Ramsay. They are proud of another of the roles the festival plays – an educational one. Each year, advanced music students – usually from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow – play alongside the regular professional members.

This gives musicians soon to enter the profession access to the major string orchestra repertoire they will meet as working musicians. It also gives them the experience of playing a touring schedule, with no two successive concerts n the same venue.

Adrian says: ‘This year we are playing some works for larger groups such as a Mendelssohn String Symphony, as this will be extremely useful to the students in their future professional careers’.

Part of the programme of the final concert – at the Bruichladdich Distillery on 9th July – will be what has become traditional – Mendelssohn’s Octet. Last year the final concert was a knock-out and this year’s cannot be anything else.

The seven core professionals – all men (Harriet Harperson wold not approve) – include Cantilena’s two Artistic Directors, violinist  Angus Ramsay and cellist Adrian Shepherd, who, with pianist Scott Mitchell, co-founded Cantilena in 1970. Alongside them are Associate Artistic Director, Stephen Shakesahaft, viola; Paul Marrion, double bass; Angus Anderson, violin; and pianist Havilland Willshire.

One of the highlights of the 2010 programme is the return of Scott Mitchell who will play in Beethoven’s ‘Ghost’ piano trio on Monday 5th July and, on Wednesday 7th July,  Beethoven’s ‘Archduke’ and Schumann’s Piano Quartet.

Tickets and Booking

Single tickets are £12 (£10 concession). Season Tickets are £60 (£50 concession). They can be bought in advance at the Celtic Shop, Bowmore (01496 810304), or at the door on the night. Children under 12 and accompanied by an adult go free. A full programme with notes on all the pieces to be performed will be available at the concerts.

There is further information at the Cantilena Festival website.

The Programme

With the exception of the afternoon concert at the Outback Art Gallery at Sanaigmore – which starts at 1.30pm, each of the evening concerts starts at 8.00pm.

• Sunday 4th July at the Columba Centre, Bowmore: piano recital – Beethoven, Schumann, Chopin, Franck
• Monday 5th July at the Columba Centre, Bowmore: Beethoven Piano Trio ‘The Ghost’ and works for strings by Scarlatti, Grieg, Dag Wiren
• Tuesday 6th July at Lagavulin Distillery:  Pavan
• Wednesday 7th July at the Outback Art Gallery at Sanaigmore: String Quintet.  Note:This is a special 2010 addition to the programme .Tickets are £5 from the Gallery and the concert begins at 1.30 pm.)
• Wednesday 7th July at the Columba Centre, Bowmore: Beethoven Piano Trio ‘The Archduke’, Schumann Piano Quartet
• Thursday 8th July at Ardbeg Distillery: Scarlatti String Sinfonia, Gabrieli Canzonia in 7 parts, Mozart Adagio & Fugue, Mendelssohn String Symphony No 9 in C
• Friday 9th July: at Bruichladdich Distillery: Mendelssohn Octet and music for fun.

So why Cantilena’ and why Islay?

The name Cantilena interested us because it suggested something to do with song but all we could discover was that it is archaic Maltese and means nothing that seemes relevant to chamber music. So we did the obvious and asked the company both these questions.

Jenny Laidlaw says: ”The original Cantilena was formed in the 1970s by Adrian Shepherd.  It was a much bigger group than the present one and all the players played in the Scottish National Orchestra.  Cantilena Festival on Islay started in 2000, and some of the original members of the group now play in the Festival.

‘The word Cantilena is Italian and means ‘a singing line’ – which in fact what music is all about.

‘The co-artistic director of Cantilena on Islay, Angus Ramsay had previously been running a festival on Mull when he, Adrian and Scott Mitchell got together to set up a similar festival but one run on different lines on Islay.  Islay was chosen because Angus Ramsay’s family originally came from Islay and therefore there are family connections’.

The photographs above are from previous Cantilena events and are by copyright holder Paul Sheldon. The venue for the event i the top photograph is self-explanatory. We’re not sure where the venue is in the second photograph above, but, given that Jura is ‘deer island’ and has a massive deer population, we wonder, given the wall decorations, if this concert one was across the sound on the sister island. (See information posted in Comments below – identifying this location.)