Wednesday 8 September 2010
7.30pm – 9.30pm

Review by
Margaret Hearne

Pete Stollery presents his evocative electro-acoustic, Still Voices, based on the sounds of the coal-fired distilling system at GlenDronach before it was removed in 2005. This is the first time the piece has been heard at GlenDronach and you will have time to see the famous stills and the old coal fires.

Elspeth Murray, gifted poet who performs her work in a wonderfully engaging way, will also be giving her interpretations of the sound of whisky.

And it's Pete's 50th birthday! Please join in this part of the celebration. One for the record books.

Refreshments available.

Pete Stollery is a composer, teacher and performer based in Aberdeen. He composes almost exclusively in the electroacoustic medium, particularly music where there exists an interplay between the original "meaning" of sounds and sounds existing purely as sound, divorced from their physical origins. In his music, this is achieved by the juxtaposition of real (familiar) and unreal (unfamiliar) sounds to create surreal landscapes.

In recent years he has become interested in how we relate to our sonic environment and has created many works for non-performance contexts.

His new opera 74 Degrees North (in collaboration with Paul Mealor, libretto by Peter Davidson) was premiered by Scottish Opera in May 2010.

See www.petestollery.com for more.

Elspeth Murray is a poet and wordsmith who became involved in the world of whisky in 2005 through the 26 Malts project where writers joined designers to create labels for single cask strength bottlings from the Scotch Malt Whisky Society. She serves on the Tasting Panel of the SMWS and has helped for several years to host their renowned Girls Burns Night.

Elspeth also works as a writer with schools, libraries, businesses, health organizations and arts projects. She has been writer in residence with Scottish Widows, and was part of the Scotland Chicago Teaching Artists Exchange in 2009. Since 2002 she has been a member of the Church of Sonology, a renegade band of jazz musicians, sound engineers, artists and audiophiles.

As a theatre producer, she works with the award-winning puppetry and storytelling show, The Man Who Planted Trees, returning recently from a five month tour of North America, with Sydney Opera House on the itinerary for November.

Straight after the GlenDronach Distillery event, she will be speaking at a literature conference in Durham on Applied anthro-poetics at the boundaries between lived experience, policy rhetoric and imagination. The talk will mostly be about flip-flops.

See www.elspethmurray.com for more.

Promoted by

Huntly Writers

Supported by

Scottish Book Trust
GlenDronach Distillery
Huntly Hairst Food Festival
Gordon Forum for the Arts
North East Writers