Echoes in Stone and Brass
Glasgow Cathedral - 17/09/26
Royal Scottish National Orchestra Trombones, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland Brass, Rookh Quartet, Glasgow Cathedral Choir, Drew Hammond (organ), Sam McErlean (sound and live electronics).
Architecture and acoustic space are never merely passive containers for music. In performance curated around physical reverberation, the venue acts as a primary instrument. Glasgow Cathedral’s 2026 Festival feature, ‘Echoes in Stone and Brass’ – curated by RSNO principal trombonist Dávur Juul Magnussen – took as its conceptual pivot the acoustics of Klæmintsgjógv, a Faroese sea cave renowned for shifting resonance governed by tide and wind.
Through interweaving field recordings captured by sound artist Sam McErlean with seven distinct improvisatory episodes, brass configurations and choral interventions, the evening examined the unnameable musical boundary where raw environmental physics meets human counterpoint. For the audience, scattered throughout the space at standing tables and on bright red beanbags, with was an immersive musical and choreographic experience.
The programme opened with Antiquity. In Seikilos Epitaph, Magnussen’s solo trombone grounded the oldest surviving complete notated composition, alongside the Rookh Quartet and live electronic processing. The transition into Improvisation 2: Under stone, water remembers showcased Andrew Forbes’ Glasgow Cathedral Choir in fragments derived from Ailie Robertson’s work, testing how vocal timbre settles into medieval ashlar. The choral entries were restrained, avoiding lush homophony in favour of linear textures that allowed the building’s native decay time to carry individual lines into suspension.
Contemporary commissions formed the evening’s structural core, examining physical and ecological collapse. Drew Hammond’s Watershed II – scored for trombones and organ – confronted the wreckage left by Hurricane Helene in Southern Appalachia. Hammond balanced the weight of the cathedral organ against direct, unadorned brass figures, resisting easy sentimentality in favour of stark, open intervals. Claire McCue’s Stalacgtides followed, deploying trombone dyads and choir to mirror the gradual union of stalactite and stalagmite. Here, small shifts between upper and lower registers evoked mineral accretion, with voice and low brass merging into unified harmonic columns.
A notable shift in texture occurred with Sofia Kiviniemi’s ‘The Heavier it Rocks’ , a work grounded in soil, earthy density, and industrial weight. McErlean’s live electronics transformed low-frequency vibrations into physical pressure, demonstrating how spatialisation can carry heavy sonic weight within a sacred interior. Similarly, the transcription of Jan Garbarek’s ‘Strophe and Counter-Strophe‘ replaced the original saxophone soloist with a dialogue between four Wagner tubas (performed by the Rookh Quartet) and trombone improvisation. The dark, rounded middle registers of the tubas provided a muted, velvet backdrop against which Magnussen’s improvised lines navigated modal territory reminiscent of Jan Garbarek’s early work with the Hilliard Ensemble.
Atmospheric contrast arrived via Alisson Kruusmaa’s from Three Lullaby Night Songs. The Rookh Quartet articulated Kruusmaa’s depiction of Amsterdam’s against the cathedral vaults before resolving into quiet harmonic clusters. evening chimes with pristine intonation, letting bell-like motifs decay naturally
The culmination of the programme, Neil Tòmas Smith’s ‘Things Which Pass,’ brought together the entire ensemble – RSNO Trombones, Rookh Quartet, RCS Brass, Glasgow Cathedral Choir, organist Drew Hammond, and McErlean’s electronics. Setting two contrasting poetic texts consisting of an anonymous inscription from the Sutro Baths and Charlotte Mew’s reflections on transience, Smith constructed a complex, multi-layered structure. Spatial distribution was critical here: brass forces situated across distinct areas of the nave created a physical dialogue, forcing the listener to perceive sound as movement through space rather than originating from a single source. The final movement, ‘Improvisation 7: Breathe, open, rise’, permitted the accumulated textures to dissipate gradually, leaving the audience with the unadorned ambience of the stone nave.
‘Echoes in Stone and Brass’ succeeded because it treated acoustic resonance not as a decorative effect, but as a structural compositional element. By mapping the wild, subterranean geography of Faroese sea caves onto the medieval choir of Glasgow Cathedral, the performance offered a rigorous investigation into how sound inhabits, measures, and transforms physical space. All of this was enhanced by subtle lighting that allowed darkness to reign while constantly keeping dawn at hand.
* More on the Glasgow Cathedral Festival here: www.gcfestival.com
