Thuit an Oidhche Oirnn (The Night Overtook us )

One Touch Theatre, Eden Court, Inverness.   14/04/25 

 Scottish Ensemble lead by Jonathan Morton, Elias String Quartet, Donald Grant violinist, Tom Gibbs piano, Euan Burton bass, Calum Stewart pipes, Innes White guitar, Mischa Macpherson vocals. 

This event was an absolute treat. The One Touch Theatre, an intimate and perfect space for the event was full. The audience was knowledgeable and hugely appreciative of the breadth of material and the excellence of the performers. It all contributed to a terrific evening of music and song. 

The skill of the musicians goes without saying from the prestigious Scottish Ensemble to the Elias String Quartet each one a musician of note and of course Donald Grant, acclaimed fiddle player and composer, who organised the whole show. 

The varied programme was opened by the Scottish Ensemble playing ‘Falling Still’ a haunting piece by Emily Doolittle inspired by birdsong and falling rain.  The solo melody is parallel to a bird song while a series of falling chords represent inanimate sound such as rain or waves. It was commissioned by the Canada Council for the Arts and it set the scene for an immersive evening of music which was fascinating and diverse and always enjoyable. 

Donald Grant has an infectious enthusiasm for his craft  and displayed obvious delight at being back in his native Highlands. He is a virtuoso who makes the violin speak and his sheer expertise carries not just the audience but the whole stage with him. 

His compositions frequently  refer back to his home land around Glen Roy, one piece in particular evoking the frozen river Roy. 

Mischa Macpherson who brought her pure and sensitive voice to the performance was a joy to listen to. The award winning Gaelic singer’s voice has been described as “soft as rain and swooping as a seabird“ by ‘The Independent’.  In the last piece before the interval she joined with Donald Grant to lead a Gaelic waulking song requiring audience participation. Suffice to say the Highland audience did not disappoint. 

The second half began with the  Scottish Ensemble playing  James Macmillan’s 5-note piece ‘For Sonny’.  This piece by the renowned Scottish composer is a little miniature in memory of a little boy first performed by the Edinburgh Quartet in 2012. Throughout the first violin plays a simple fragment like a nursery rhyme repeating over and over again, pizzicato. The other instruments provide an ever changing context for this little tune, sometimes accompanying it with easy harmonies, sometimes straying into stranger territory, always mesmerising. 

 An intriguing work for strings by Martin Suckling followed and Callum Stewart’s award winning composition for the uillean pipes inspired by the landscape and heritage of his native Northern Scotland brought yet another layer of musicality. 

 The evening was rounded off by Donald Grant’s ‘Thuit ab Oidhche Oirnn ‘ (The Night Overtook Us) themed around winter and light in the Highlands of Scotland including the story of a tragic snowstorm in the 19th century.   Collaboration lies at the heart of Donald Grant’s music making and in this wonderful piece he has written  innovative arrangements for band and string orchestra which built up to a stirring conclusion and brought his highland  audience to its feet in a standing ovation.