Join us for the opening concert of Scotland Unwrapped as Seb & Kit perform A Short Diary in Hall Two.

A Short Diary was released on ECM Records earlier this year. It was Sebastian Rochford’s exquisitely poignant response to his father’s death in 2019. All tracks, except one, were composed by Seb on his grandfather’s piano in his childhood home in Aberdeen. He then recorded them with his friend, BBC Jazz Award winner and Mercury Music Award-nominee Kit Downes on piano, adding his own drums as a kind of discreet conversational partner.

This is music as a lament but also as an act of remembrance, ‘a sonic memory, created with love, out of need for comfort.’ It is deeply beautiful, full of hymn-like simplicity and space, yet also human warmth.

The final track Even Now I Think Of Her was composed by Seb’s Dad, poet and psychotherapist Gerard Rochford. In Seb’s words: ‘It’s a tune my dad had sung into his phone and sent me. I forwarded this to Kit’s phone. He listened, and then we started.’

This event will last approximately 2 hours, including an interval.

Reviews

‘…sorrow is replaced with consolation, and, in responding to death, the duo also creates a parable of grief.’ Pitchfork

‘Pure music of luminous quality [which is] bound to be in quite a few year-end lists.’ The Arts Desk