BBC SSO: Tectonics Glasgow 2025

Tectonics Glasgow 2025

Presented by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

Saturday 3 May 2025

Sunday 4 May 2025

Weekend Festival Pass: £32 / £26 concession

Saturday Pass £22 / £16 concession

Sunday Pass £22/ £16 concession

A limited number of advance passes are available for the Festival. They allow entry to all events across the two days and are the best way to save money. Passes are only available to buy until Friday 25 April 2025 and subject to availability. No refunds are available for partial use and passes are not transferrable.

Concessions are available to students, unemployed and registered disabled. Proof of status is required.

15.00 Introduction and Workshops at 15.20, 16.20, 18.30 & 18.50

Recital Room Installation

BAUDOUIN OOSTERLYNCK

Baudouin Oosterlynck transforms the Recital Room into a sanctuary for deep listening. Ticket reservation is required on the day for Listening Instruments.

c.16.00

Old Fruitmarket

LAUREN SARAH HAYES

“Intrepid Scottish improvisor” (The Herald) Lauren Sarah Hayes explores instability, ephemerality and unpredictability through playful and tactile explorations of her hybrid analogue-digital live electronics instrument, which comprises self-built software, voice processing, analogue synths, drum machines and repurposed controllers. Influenced by experimental pop, techno, noise and free improvisation, her 2016 album MANIPULATION was praised by The Wire for its “skittering melodies and clip-clopping rhythms suggesting a mischievous intelligence emerging from this web of wires”. She has toured extensively across Europe and North America, including as part of the BBC’s New Radiophonic Workshop, where she explored innovative approaches to sound and music.

c.17.00

Main Hall

RICHARD CRAIG

Mesías Maiguashca Sacateca’s Dance for flute and tape (1993)

Andre Boucourechliev Ulysse for flute and percussion (1980)

María Cecilia Villanueva Cielo Gris for solo flute (2023)

Patricia Alessandrini Il y a plus d'eau que prévu sur la lune for contrabass flute and electronics (2020)

Richard Craig flute Jennifer Torrence percussion

Described as "a primal, at times ecstatic state of Fauvist force" (Gramophone), Glasgow-born Richard Craig has developed a distinctive approach to the flute, collaborating with composers to create new works. A founding member of the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra, he has performed with Ensemble Musikfabrik, Klangforum Wien and Riot Ensemble. “Music is the ideal medium to begin a reflection on our surroundings”, he poses. This concert explores themes of transformation, our consideration of the external world, and the alchemical dynamics of music. Let your imagination run riot with the mythological journey of Odysseus, the endless skyline of Cielo Gris, the fusion of materials in Sacateca's Dance, and a tribute to the miraculous eye in the night sky that holds sway over us all.

c.17.45

Old Fruitmarket

BEATRICE DILLON, MARK SANDERS & RACHEL MUSSON

WITH BBC SSO

Beatrice Dillon Sift: Piano, Vibraphone, Other…

Mark Sanders/Rachel Musson New collaboration

Drummer/percussionist Mark Sanders has played concerts and festivals across the world and has featured on over 220 vinyl and CD releases. For many years, he’s performed with the UK-based saxophonist and improviser Rachel Musson, who has recently expanded her practice to include composed elements with text, field recordings and sound processing. This performance is a deeply intuitive yet intriguingly unpredictable collaboration with Ilan Volkov and BBC SSO players.

Beatrice Dillon’s new (and first) work for orchestra translates her distinct vocabulary of synthetic sound and generative systems into the acoustic realm of the orchestra. Her 2020 debut release, Workaround, was The Wire’s ‘Album of the Year’, described by The Guardian as an “exuberant experiment in mixing 150bpm dub-techno with live instrumentation fizz”. Sift was commissioned by nonclassical in partnership with BBC SSO and Radio 3, premiered by the London Symphony Orchestra.

18.45-19.15

Scottish Music Centre
MEET THE ARTISTS – DAY 1
Your chance to meet and hear about some of the artists and music performed in Day 1 of Tectonics, hosted by BBC Radio 3 presenter and writer Kate Molleson.

c.19.30
Various spaces including Grand Hall & Foyer
ØYVIND TORVUND’S SYMPHONY
Ilan Volkov conductor
Kjetil Møster saxophone
Jørgen Træen synth & electric guitar
Jennifer Torrence percussion
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

Having played the guitar in rock and improvising groups, the eclectic influences of Norway’s fearless composer Øyvind Torvund range from Baroque and folk music to noise, electronics and popular culture. In this 40-minute work (originally written as a site specific work for the Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo), Torvund invites the audience to move freely throughout various spaces across the venue: “You can think of the piece as a multilayered festival in itself where various forms of expressions and energies take place at the same time.” Players from the BBC SSO perform alongside percussionist Jennifer Torrence, saxophonist Kjetil Møster, and Jørgen Træen on synth and electric guitar.

c.20.30
Main Hall
BBC SCOTTISH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA 1
Clara Iannotta strange bird — no longer navigating by a star UK Premiere
Timothy McCormack a vapor (no body, no image) World Premiere

Ty Bouque singer
Ilan Volkov conductor
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

a vapor (no body, no image) is a seance meant to conjure a terrain in which to house an awkward, absent, and collective mourning. Timothy McCormack’s work articulates and reckons with how queer individuals learn of, reconcile, grieve, and hold space for the lost generation of queer and gay individuals who died during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and '90s. What is the source of grief when lived experience was not shared with the dead? How do we grieve a ghost? Soloist Ty Bouque helps to articulate this peculiar and devastating mode of mourning, using the journals of writer and AIDS victim Hervé Guibert.
Inspired by Dorothy Molloy’s lyrical and evocative poem My heart lives in my chest , Clara Iannotta ’s work is similarly an exploration of loss. “Some strange flapping bird” drifts from place to place in empty skies without ever landing or finding its destination.

c.21.15
Old Fruitmarket
BEATRICE DILLON
Beatrice Dillon is a rhythm-obsessive DJ and music producer working across sound, performance and installation. Her solo debut album Workaround was lucidly playful and ambitious, combining her love of UK club music’s syncopated suss and Afro-Caribbean influences with a gamely experimental approach to modern composition and stylistic fusion. Dillon uses inventive sampling and luminous mixing techniques adapted from modern pop to express fresh ideas about groove-driven music.