The Linlithgow String Orchestra launched its 10th Anniversary Season last November with an enterprising new work – Engine Shed – by the idiosyncratic British composer Deborah Shaw. Fast forward to its Summer Concert last Sunday and, once again, the LSO was premiering a new commission, this time by the 21-year-old Kent-born composer, and recent graduate of Kings College London, Joe Cobb. Thus the Anniversary Season continued with the same sense of discovery that marked its opening.
This programme was mostly about “connections”, explained the orchestra’s unflappable conductor Bill Jones, elaborating in a colourful spoken narrative that weaved its connecting thread throughout the hour-long proceedings. Convenient historical landmarks stamped their influence: 500 years since the Battle of Linlithgow Bridge (full-bodied string arrangements of 16th century madrigals by Pierre Passereau and Anon Scots to open with); 400 years since the death of John Dowland (his The King of Denmark’s Galliard and the signature melancholy of his famous Lachrimae); and 250 years since the US Declaration of Independence (Aaron Copland’s riotous Hoedown).
Where these performances were credited with unflinching enthusiasm, at times lustily or baked with luxuriant texturing, there was also much to enjoy in the sentimental sweep of Mascagni’s much-loved Intermezzo from Cavalleria rusticana. A string arrangement of William Harris’ double choir motet Faire is the Heaven may have left those who know its choral manifestation (and Edmund Spenser’s flavoursome words) a little short changed, but it served its purpose in paving the way for the wild exuberance of Copland’s Hoedown.
As for Joe Cobb, what was the connection there? Jones, it transpired, in his former professional life as head teacher at a Kent prep school, had spotted the youngster’s musical talent at an early age and was delighted to see him now on the brink of a career in composition. Cobb had responded to the LSO’s commission with Calluna (meaning “heather”), a picturesque meditation on the soft unpredictability of a moorland landscape.
Its modal opening cast an instant spell, simple and questioning, leading to a conversation of textures that combined dense post-Delian harmonies with light and airy lyricism. The ending, atmospherically whispered, made its magical point.
In completing the official programme, Jones revealed yet another intriguing connection in anticipation of an encore especially devised in honour of Cobb, whose great uncle, it transpires, was the Paisley-born singer-songwriter Gerry Rafferty. Cobb was not only presented with an original Humblebums album (the folk rock band that featured both Rafferty and Billy Connolly), but the LSO then let rip with their own arrangement of Rafferty’s biggest hit, Baker Street, audience participation encouraged and briefly, politely, received.
It’s one thing to recognise the sterling work done by the enthusiastic musicians of Linlithgow String Orchestra in maintaining, as their 10th anniversary season attests, a clearly enjoyable interest in amateur music making. It’s quite another to acknowledge their bold achievement in helping develop the creation, and ultimately the premiere, of a brand new work.
The latter reached its impressive destination on Sunday evening within the vast ecclesiastical elegance of the West Lothian town’s St Michaels’ Parish Church. Within a wider programme – everything from Orlando Gibbons to Dvorak to the old radio classic Puffin’ Billy – we witnessed the premiere performance of Deborah Shaw’s Engine Shed, a five-moment work written over the past year in direct practical collaboration with the orchestra and its musical director Bill Jones.
As the title hints, a railway theme provided the overriding stimulus, not altogether unconnected to the generous LNER sponsorship, channeled through amateur performance network Making Music’s Adopt-a-Music-Creator initiative, that made the project possible. Linlithgow, as those who regularly pass through it on the train may not be surprised to learn, owes much of its industrial-age heritage to the railway.
This was reinforced abundantly in a performance driven largely by literal references. From the barely audible steely hiss of the opening bars (reawakening memories of Richard Rodney Bennett’s steamy soundtrack for Murder on the Orient Express) and initially passive atmospherics, grinding mechanical ostinati emerged as if to signal a benevolent threat. A Scots reel made its inevitable appearance in the ensuing tribute to the Flying Scotsman, Shaw herself (along with a young Alicia Greig on train whistle) enacting authentic railway hand signals from the locomotive’s heyday as a visual add-on.
Universal issues found voice in a movement referencing the peaks and troughs of the industry, musically evoked through a tougher sentimentality, while the brief blues-inspired Gandy Men looked to the toil of the so-called Gandy Dancers, the African Americans who sang to mitigate the hardships they encountered while maintaining the US railroads.
Shaw left the most intriguing moment to the finale, joining the orchestra on harp and voice at the rear to intone a simple song, “Coal Dust on Powdered Lips”, as an anthem to women’s traditionally supportive, now increasingly active, role in the industry. A certain euphoric quality emerged here, a kind of mystical descant – veering along Kate Bush lines – to an otherwise earthbound sound world. Even the orchestral players found their voices, providing additional vocal backing that resonated magically and quietly in the hazy acoustics.
There was clearly a challenge to be met in this music, Shaw grappling with the widely-varied technical expertise of the ensemble in the course of creating something exciting, imaginative and convincing. As such, the musical components were necessarily elemental, sometimes naive as a consequence, but clearly embraced by the players as a project to call their own, and in which to inject a palpable determination and pride.
Engine Shed was just part of a sequence of pieces performed with trains in mind: loosely so with Dvorak’s playful Humoresque, justified by the composer’s known obsession with railway timetables; more obviously in Flanders and Swann’s The Slow Train – a wistful lament, sung affectionately by Jones himself, to stations lost as a result of the 1960s’ Beeching cuts – and in Edward Whilte’s mirthful Puffin’ Billy.
The concert ended with Carl Davis’ Pride and Prejudice Suite from his soundtrack to the 1990s BBC series, LSO violinist Glyn Eggar transferring to a starring role on solo piano. I’d like to say I took the train home, but late-night connections aren’t quite what they used to be.
Far from having ideas above its station, a Scots amateur string orchestra is riding the high ground with a rail-themed world premiere, musical director Bill Jones tells KEN WALTON
Bill Jones takes great satisfaction in telling his old Edinburgh University compadre, Kathryn McDowell, that he’s the incumbent maestro of the LSO. Which he is; just not the same globally-recognised LSO that the ennobled McDowell directs.
Whereas Dame Kathryn has steered the eminent fortunes of the London Symphony Orchestra as managing director for many years, counting Sir Simon Rattle among her notable signings, Jones, a retired prep school headmaster with a music degree and serious form as a singer and jazz musician (recently at the Cumnock Tryst), is the motivating power behind the Linlithgow String Orchestra. “Kathryn, who’s a great friend, didn’t seem particularly put out when I told her I conduct the real LSO,” he quips.
Right now, West Lothian’s own LSO is riding on a high. Set up as a community orchestra in May 2016 by local amateur enthusiasts, its 10th Anniversary Season is now underway, which the LSO’s committee reckoned might be the perfect moment to facilitate a piece specially written for the occasion. The result is Engine Shed by Edinburgh-based composer, harpist and pianist Deborah Shaw, described as “a creator of beguiling songs and compelling soundscapes”. As a performer she works under the offbeat soubriquet Aurora Engine.
Composer Deborah Shaw
Railway trains, then, would appear to be a prominent theme here: fortuitously so, as the project – supported by Making Music’s UK-wide Adopt a Music Creator scheme – has also attracted sponsorship for the premiere from LNER as part of Railway 200, its celebration of two centuries of the modern railway.
The world premiere of Engine Shed takes place on Sunday 9 November at St Michael’s Parish Church, Linlithgow, alongside other railway-themed performances of Edward White’s 1950s’ BBC Children’s Favourites theme tune Puffin’ Billy, Flanders and Swann’s lament to a branch line closure Slow Train (arranged and sung by Jones), even a bit of Dvorak. “He was mad about railways and apparently knew the Prague train timetable off by heart,” Jones explains as justification for including the famous Czech composer.
What it all amounts to, he insists, is a programme that the LSO’s amateur players have really warmed to, whether revelling in the tuneful comfort zone of lighter classics, or confronted by the more modernist challenges of Shaw’s sonic landscape. “What was so good about this project was that Deborah came in at the beginning of the year and got to know us,” Jones explains. “I was keen she should attend some rehearsals, see what we were like and just talk to the players and get to know them.
“She must have had the idea for a railway theme early on,” he adds. “Deborah’s nuts on trains which I suppose isn’t surprising given she grew up in Shildon, County Durham, where [Stephenson’s] Locomotive No 1 started its journey two hundred years ago. Whatever inspired her, it was a smart move, given the significance of the railway in shaping Linlithgow’s prosperity and the great local stories attached to that association.”
Known for her imaginative sonic creations, Shaw incorporates in her score archival recordings of “Twizell”, the UK’s oldest working steam engine by Robert Stephenson now cared for by Gateshead’s Tanfield Railway, the orchestral cues indicated by authentic LNER guards whistles and traditional railway hand signals. Yet her thoughts are also directed towards wider universal concerns. “It’s much more than a celebration of trains,” she writes. “I wanted my work to shine a light on the underrepresented voices in both rail and music, from women and marginalised workers to African American railroad traditions.”
Bill Jones in jazz mode
Making Music’s Adopt a Music Creator scheme also brought Shaw into contact with an allocated mentor, in this case the multi-award winning Scottish composer and harpist Ailie Robertson. “Ailie came along to one or two rehearsals, then via Zoom we were all able to keep track on progress, checking deadlines and reviewing practical issues. But the liaison was principally between Deborah and Ailie,” says Jones.
In the end, he’s just delighted that, besides the challenge of tackling unfamiliar techniques, there are plenty good tunes to keep his players happy, including “a great Scots reel”. “It was a strange experience for us to be attempting a brand new piece, but I just said to them, ‘nobody but us knows what this actually sounds like and when you perform things like this there’s a lot of kidology involved. Just do it with a straight face!’”
Nonetheless, the whole process of seeing Engine Shed come to fruition has been an inspiring one for the 10-year-old orchestra which, itself, represents only part of Jones’ wider immersion in the town’s busy musical life.
After retiring in 2020 from his headmaster’s post in Kent, he and his violinist wife Hilary (the orchestra’s leader) moved up to Linlithgow where his first local initiation, in the wake of Covid, was to take on the musical directorship of St Michael’s Church, not as organist, but responsible for the church choir and working with wider community music groups. “I knew the church from having recorded Robert Carver’s masses there years ago as a singer with Cappella Nova”, he recalls.
“Eventually I was also invited to take on the string orchestra, reminding them that I was a trombonist, not a string player. That’s been such a wonderful learning experience for me. My thing with an amateur orchestra is, if we’re not smiling when we’re playing then we’re doing something wrong. I’m not one for raising my voice with players; they’re actually very busy people with their own reasons for giving up their time, whether they view it as wonderful therapy, an opportunity to play nice music, or even just a bit of social interaction. Doing this kind of community music-making has become a real passion.”
Engine Shed by Deborah Shaw is premiered by Linlithgow String Orchestra at St Michael’s Parish Church on Sunday 9 November at 7pm. Admission is free, bookable at www.linlithgowstringorchestra.uk
