Share in an evening inspired by the hardship, wild beauty and community spirit of an island winter, with traditional Gaelic and contemporary string music from Aurora, fiddler Donald Grant and friends.

The shadows of a winter evening settle in the world premiere of Donald Grant’s Thuit an Oidhche Oirnm (The Night Overtook Us). We journey through Gaelic lands to the sounds of traditional tunes, woven together by arrangements and original songs by Donald Grant: a lullaby tells us of a beheading, the music of hundreds of years of islander communities rings. David Fennessy’s Hirta Rounds takes us to remote Hirta in the St Kilda archipelago, from which a thriving community was forced to evacuate in 1930, leaving only the shells of their houses behind. Dive into Scottish folklore in Ailie Robertson’s The Black Pearl, fragments of a Scottish reel greeting Bach’s Goldberg Variations in an expressive dialogue.

Collaboration lies at the heart of Donald Grant’s music making, a passion which began playing traditional Gaelic tunes as a boy with his father in the Scottish Highlands. Tonight he continues his love of making music with friends, joining Aurora’s string players and other Celtic musicians to bring the sounds of remote Scottish island life to Kings Place.

This event will last approximately 1 hour, without an interval.