Colin Currie & The King’s Singers
Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, 2/8/25, 11 am
The King’s Singers, Colin Currie (marimba)
I first heard The King’s Singers live in the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin in the late 1970’s as a birthday treat for my mother. They comprise two counter-tenors, one tenor, two baritones and one bass, and the eclectic repertoire and the genial excellence of performance practice are unchanged. In a collaboration with Scottish percussion superstar Colin Currie on marimba, they opened the Queen’s Hall series of this year’s Edinburgh International Festival on the forenoon of Saturday 2nd August. All 7 musicians took a turn at introducing programme items, while at the start Festival Director Nicola Benedetti introduced the Festival and the lunchtime programme, which featured some world premieres.
The macabre unifying theme of almost all the programme was ‘Death’ and Steve Martland’s 1997 ‘Street Songs’, settings of 4 children’s rhymes featuring death which were dotted through the programme, were coyly “on message”. They were ‘Poor Roger’ (a chilling tale of live coffining and ‘resurrection’), ‘Green Gravel’ (an idyllic love story cut short by death), ‘Jenny Jones’ (where in three verses, visitors are told she is washing, then dying, then dead) and ‘Oranges and Lemons’ (mostly cheerful but ending with ‘here comes a chopper to chop off your head’). The vocal and marimba lines were mostly syncopated and staccato, with a stylish Latin flavour.
Stanley Glasser’s 1977 ‘Lala Mntwana’ (from Lalela Zulu – I remember hearing the energetic ‘Mambabo!’ many years ago) was a lullaby where a mother tells her baby that the father is on a train towards Johannesburg to look for (dangerous) work in the mines. Of course, he will return. The music hints otherwise.
Thomas Weelkes’ 1608 ‘Death hath deprived me’ is a homage and lament for the loss of his teacher and “dearest friend”, Thomas Morley. It featured achingly beautiful harmonies with some surprising modulations, before segueing directly into a world premiere of a new arrangement by baritone, composer, arranger and all-round “Renaissance man” Roderick Williams of his 2021 setting of John Donne’s sonnet, ‘Death be not proud’. Very beautiful and timelessly moving, 21st century music reaching back across the centuries.
Francesca Amewudah-Rivers’ 2022 piece ‘Alive’ offered relief from the morbidity, as it was contrastingly life-affirming. For voices only with a pop-song feel, the harmonies were not unsophisticated and there was a syncopated jazzy scat episode. Sustaining the levity, it was followed by another world premiere and an EIF commission, Sir James MacMillan’s ‘A Bunch o’ Craws’, based on the Glaswegian children’s song “Three Craws Sat Upon a Wa’”, sported additional lyrics for no fewer than 7 craws, including all vocalists and the marimba player (who “couldnae sing at a’”). Hilarious, with the macabre reasserting itself as the collective term for a “bunch o’ craws”, a “murder”. Very well received, with thunderous applause for the performers and the composer, who was present.
Bryce Dessner’s 2014 ‘Tromp Miniature’, which opened the second half, was a neo-classical étude for solo marimba, performed with dazzling virtuosity, with a calmer coda. Fabulous.
Peter Louis van Dijk’s 1995 ‘Horizons’ took us back to South Africa and the ancient culture of its indigenous San people. Starting as a lullaby, the narrative begins with the hunter-gatherer’s curiosity about what lies beyond the horizon, but with the arrival from over the horizon of the Europeans, the hunter becomes the prey, displacement and genocide his fate. Grimly topical.
In another new EIF commission and a world premiere arrangement, Missy Mazzoli’s 2021 ‘Year of our Burning’ is a 5-movement cycle dealing with the physical and mental health challenges of isolation and deprivation as experienced by creatives during the pandemic. Interesting vocal and instrumental effects evoked solitude, intrusive thoughts, the surreal nature of digital ‘communication’ and insomnia. Profound and revelatory.
An excellent start to the Festival. We were told that the collaboration between The King’s Singers and Colin Currie will be a long-term arrangement. We were sent away with a pop-song encore: “I want a love like this”. Don’t we all?