EIF 2023 Catriona Price & Friends The Hub 11th August Review
Catriona Price & Friends at The Hub this evening was very much a celebration of what the Edinburgh International Festival is all about – creativity in all of its many forms and the friendships that can arise from the participation (either as a performer or just in the audience) in an or all of the many threads of the ever changing tapestry that we like to call “the arts”.
This show was many things; a celebration of music and words, a celebration of the joy of performing both with friends, sharing all of this with an audience, and celebrating the diverse creativity that people are capable of.
Catriona was born on Orkney to a musical upbringing and while you would almost expect this to give her a firm grounding in traditional music (which it has), her training as a classical violinist/musician has seen her reputation as not only a highly skilled musician but also as a gifted composer and arranger of music swiftly grow and attract much attention from other musicians and audiences.
There is a restless curiosity within Catriona Price that over the years has seen musical projects which so far include the band Fara, the duo 12th Day, the string ensemble Thirteen North, and perhaps her widest scale of work to date, ‘Hert’ – a diverse 50-minute suite for string quartet, harp, piano, flute, vocal trio, drums and bass, which also celebrates work of poets and writers (many from Orkney) that are special to Catriona. This work premiered at Celtic Connections 2020. The album “Hert”, Catriona’s first solo one, was released in January 2023 and most of tonight’s performance was from this work.
Hert is not an easy work to perform live as it requires nine people on stage, but it clearly deserves to be a work that is seen as widely and often as possible, as the musical pathways that Catriona Price is walking down are many. Here Jazz, Folk and Classical music effortlessly flow in and out of each other, merging with her vocals and the words of writers that she is weaving into a very special work of creativity and imagination, and the layering of the arrangements that her “eight friends” (yes they are real friends) add to this project made this a very unique performance.
Whether it be Hert (words Kevin Cormack), Swans (words George Mackay Brown), Storms (words Margaret Tait), or any of the other works in this project, Catriona Price has perfectly matched the music to the pictures that the words evoke and both seem like they should always have been together.
Review by Tom King © 2023
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
This show was many things; a celebration of music and words, a celebration of the joy of performing both with friends, sharing all of this with an audience, and celebrating the diverse creativity that people are capable of.
Catriona was born on Orkney to a musical upbringing and while you would almost expect this to give her a firm grounding in traditional music (which it has), her training as a classical violinist/musician has seen her reputation as not only a highly skilled musician but also as a gifted composer and arranger of music swiftly grow and attract much attention from other musicians and audiences.
There is a restless curiosity within Catriona Price that over the years has seen musical projects which so far include the band Fara, the duo 12th Day, the string ensemble Thirteen North, and perhaps her widest scale of work to date, ‘Hert’ – a diverse 50-minute suite for string quartet, harp, piano, flute, vocal trio, drums and bass, which also celebrates work of poets and writers (many from Orkney) that are special to Catriona. This work premiered at Celtic Connections 2020. The album “Hert”, Catriona’s first solo one, was released in January 2023 and most of tonight’s performance was from this work.
Hert is not an easy work to perform live as it requires nine people on stage, but it clearly deserves to be a work that is seen as widely and often as possible, as the musical pathways that Catriona Price is walking down are many. Here Jazz, Folk and Classical music effortlessly flow in and out of each other, merging with her vocals and the words of writers that she is weaving into a very special work of creativity and imagination, and the layering of the arrangements that her “eight friends” (yes they are real friends) add to this project made this a very unique performance.
Whether it be Hert (words Kevin Cormack), Swans (words George Mackay Brown), Storms (words Margaret Tait), or any of the other works in this project, Catriona Price has perfectly matched the music to the pictures that the words evoke and both seem like they should always have been together.
Review by Tom King © 2023
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com