NOW here's an interesting item. Next Monday members of the Scottish
Chamber Orchestra will be giving a concert in St Mary's Episcopal
Cathedral in Glasgow's Great Western Road.
The concert will be conducted by James MacMillan, and will have a
political-religious theme. It will focus, through two of MacMillan's own
works, on injustice in Latin America. In 1986, immediately following a
helicopter attack by El Salvadorean forces on a small village, the local
priest initiated an improvised ritual of exorcism to bring the villagers
out of shock.
The Exorcism of Rio Sumpul, an instrumental piece -- now widely
performed and commercially recorded -- was composed by MacMillan in
response to the incident. Even more graphic is his music theatre work,
Busqueda, which uses the words of the Mothers of the Disappeared of
Argentina, interspersed with settings of the Ordinary of the Latin Mass.
Requiring an instrumental ensemble, a speaking chorus of eight actors,
another chorus of three sopranos, and a narrator, Busqueda will occupy
the second half of the programme. Narrator for this performance will be
the actress Diana Quick, who recently gave a reportedly moving account
of the work with the Philharmonia in London.
The programme, presented by SCIAF (Scottish Catholic Internat-
ional Aid Fund) also includes two American works: Charles Ives's The
Unanswered Question and John Adams's Christian Zeal Activity.
The concert begins at 8pm, and tickets are #8.
A footnote (fresh from the mint): it has not yet been formally
announced, but Busqueda has just been taken on by Wiesbaden State Opera,
who intend to produce it as a short opera next March, and have invited
MacMillan to Germany to be composer-in-residence for the production.
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