VoxCarnyx

Sir James MacMillan’s Cumnock Tryst Festival enters its second decade this October, a sure sign that the award-winning East Ayrshire festival – most recently recipient of a Sky Arts Award and a second Royal Philharmonic Society Award – has earned its spurs. 

It was a proudly relaxed MacMillan last Saturday who revealed the 2025 Festival Programme in Cumnock’s St John’s Church before handing over to the a cappella vocal ensemble The Sixteen, whose concert of Renaissance and contemporary repertoire played no small part in attracting the capacity, in some cases well-travelled, attendance. 

Harry Christophers’ precision-engineered choir are not actually appearing at this year’s Festival, but its long association with The Tryst made a perfectly legitimate case for its hybrid presence at the weekend. Having appeared in the 2014 inaugural Festival and several others since, MacMillan’s own close association with the group and their joint ongoing support from the London-based Genesis Foundation, represents a bond that has spawned numerous projects geared at supporting emerging artists, especially young composers.

Saturday’s concert, Voices of Angels, highlighted one of these initiatives. Alongside seraphically-inspired Renaissance gems by Palestrina, Victoria and the biographically-colourful Francisco Guerrero (who twice survived attacks by pirates while on pilgrimage to the Holy Land), were genuinely exultant works by three young composers – Lucy Walker, Ninfea Cruttwell-Reade and Millicent B James – clearly having benefitted from MacMillan’s mentorship and such immersive performances by Christophers’ crack choristers.

It’s with voices, in fact, that the forthcoming Festival, which runs from 2-5 October, kicks off. What began with a mega-choral day for young singers throughout the various Ayrshire regions this Spring, conducted by incumbent choral gurus Eamonn Dougan and Andy McTaggart, reaches its apotheosis as the opening Three Ayrshires Choral Day on 2 October. The same day sees an evening appearance by the recently-formed Cumnock Tryst Ensemble, with music by Judith Weir, Villa-Lobos, Jay Capperauld and the UK premiere of MacMillan’s In Memoriam, all part of a programme that will now pay tribute to the cellist Christian Elliot, a founding member of the Ensemble who died recently.

In other key classical events, baritone Roderick Williams makes his Cumnock debut with the Carducci Quartet in his own arrangement of Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin. The BBC SSO and Cumnock Tryst Festival Chorus present the Scottish premiere of Texan-based Taylor Scott Davis’ Magnificat alongside MacMillan’s Benedicamus Deum caeli from The Strathclyde Motets. The National Youth Orchestras of Scotland Camerata present a wind ensemble version of Richard Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier. Perth-born pianist Alasdair Beatson plays Beethoven, Benjamin and Debussy at Dumfries House. The Festival ends with a Nordic finale from vocal collective Sansara with music exploring Scandinavian and Celtic connections.

There’s also a rare chance to hear the fruits of a relatively unsung project, Musicians in Exile, which has been running for some time now in Glasgow, spearheaded by the conductor Paul MacAlindin under the umbrella of his Govan-based orchestra The Glasgow Barons. Made up of asylum seekers now living in Scotland, these instrumentalists perform music that integrates the styles of their respective homelands, resulting in a unique stylistic fusion (4 Oct).

The less formal side of The Tryst continues with late-evening jazz from Bill Jones’ Renaissance Swing Band (2 Oct), traditional music from fiddler Alasdair Savage & Friends (3 Oct), and the conversational Cumnock Hour (3 Oct) in which poet Michael Symmons Roberts and Hebrides Ensemble artistic director Will Conway dig deep into the story of Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, which the composer wrote while detained in a World War II prison camp. 

The relevance of that? The Hebrides will perform the Messiaen in one of the Tryst’s extended series of year-round concerts on 1 February 2026 at Dumfries House. 

Full programme and booking details for the 2025 Cumnock Tryst are at www.thecumnocktryst.com