ARGENTINIAN MUSICIAN TO PLAY A ONE-OFF SHOW
EMMA CHRISTIE AND ALISTAIR BEATON
A Musician from Argentina will fill her grand piano with household rubbish during the opening concert of a north-east contemporary music festival tonight.
Fabiana Galante will use bottles, bags and cans to change the instrument's sound as she performs South American compositions at the Woodend Barn arts venue, near Banchory.
Miss Galante's concert kick-starts a three-week programme of shows by international and local artists as this year's sound festival gets under way.
The 40-year-old, who has played music since she was five, said the piano strings covered with rubbish represented the strong spirit of the South American people.
She said: "The idea of the composer is that the shape of the piano is like the map of South America. He wants to express our patience and the fact that we have to create a future for ourselves.
"All sorts of things that we discard when we eat, they're going to be inside the piano. They will make the sound completely different."
The Buenos Aires-born musician, who also composes her own work, said her audience can expect a range of sounds and styles, including a piece by Argentinean Jorge Mancini, "connected in a very abstract way to tango", and a Brazilian composition by Eduardo Mirando which uses electronic sounds.
She said: "As a contemporary music concert, it will be quite different from what you normally hear, so the moment you get into one atmosphere, you are taken into something else.
"But I have chosen pieces that will not make the audience run away. I'm not going for the most extreme because it's the first time I'm playing here and I don't know what people like."
Miss Galante, who studied at Glasgow's Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, said her concert would also feature short films of South America, recorded by Scottish theatre company, Dudendance.
Festival chairman Mark Hope said this year's line-up featured 36 public events along with around a dozen workshop sessions, taking in 21 venues throughout the area.
He said it aimed to bring contemporary music to a wider audience, with the festival programme spanning musical traditions from jazz to electro acoustic.
Tomorrow at the same Deeside venue, the Hebrides Ensemble will team up with the Scottish Dance Theatre for a new piece featuring two dancers performing to the Pari Intervallo by Arvo Part. The 3pm show will also feature ensemble performances of works by Kurtag, Berio, Poulenc and Stravinsky.
Primarily a network of local organisations, sound was set up last year through an initiative between the Woodend Barn Association and Aberdeen University. University lecturer and leading electro-acoustic composer Pete Stollery of Monymusk - who last year premiered a work in the sales ring of Inverurie's Thainstone auction centre - will stage a concert at 7.30pm on November 12 in the atrium of the Institute of Medical Sciences, which includes a new work for trumpet.
A diverse range of performers will take the stage between now and November 26 at venues including Aberdeen Business School and Migvie Church at Tarland to Duff House at Banff and tiny Monymusk Arts Centre.
Fabiana Galente will perform at the Woodend Barn, Banchory at 8pm tonight. Full details of the festival line-up are available at www.sound-scotland.co.uk Tickets and further information on this weekend's opening events are available from Woodend Barn on 01330 825431.
