Adopt a Music Creator blog: Recording between storms

In this joint blog, Sheila Biegala of Ugie Voices and Foss Foster of Aberdeenshire Saxophone Orchestra (ASO) describe their tumultuous recording session.

The day we have chosen for our recording session turns out to be between the two storms, Dudley and Eunice! We have to get our conductor up from London, our sopranino player up from Edinburgh and our composer up from Airdrie. Players are coming from Glasgow, Perthshire, Moray and all over Aberdeenshire. While our conductor endures a 28-hour journey from London, Ben Lunn takes over the conductor’s baton. Amazingly, almost all of us manage to get to Inverurie and start on time.

The venue we are using, the Acorn Centre in Inverurie, is a beautiful little venue for our recording. The manager himself has been out early in the morning shovelling the deep snow off the car park so that we can get in with our instruments and the sound engineer can get in with all his equipment.

Members of ASO hard at work. Photo credit: Christian Stölte

It’s a very intense day of recording. Our music consists of a prelude and seven movements and lasts nearly half an hour when played through. Ben Lunn wrote this piece, 'Rhymes & Recollections', in celebration of William Thom, the ‘Inverury Poet’. Thom lived and worked in our part of Scotland in the 19th century as a hand-loom weaver, and his poetry depicts the real hardships of life at that time.

One of the choir members, Gordon Hay, is the resident Doric expert and has helped everyone with the proper pronunciation of some of the more obscure words. Gordon recited some of William Thom's poems and they have also been recorded as part of the whole work. One of the pieces is entitled 'To My Flute', and Ben - with a touch of humour - has written it for the choir and bass saxophone! Zoe Sayer plays the piece beautifully, and has kindly joined the choir on a few occasions to rehearse with us.

Members of the Ugie Voices singing theirs heart out. Photo credit: Christian Stölte

We manage to get everything recorded in four hours. Our MD Richard is nearly dead on his feet by this time after all the travelling, but we enjoy the experience and our two groups finally get to socialise over lunch. We can see how well we would have got on together if it hadn’t been for the pandemic keeping us apart. Never mind - we’ve nearly got there in spite of all the difficulties! It's wonderful to hear everything coming together.

We are now awaiting the live premiere, and excitement - not to mention nerves - is building. The countdown to 26 March has begun!

Follow Aberdeenshire Saxophone Orchestra on Facebook / Instagram, Ben Lunn on Facebook / Twitter and Ugie Voices on Facebook / Twitter

The Adopt a Music Creator project matches vocal and instrumental leisure-time music groups with some of the UK’s most promising music creators to collaborate on creating a new piece of music. The project leads to a premiere performance and broadcast on BBC Radio 3. If you’re a music group or music creator and you’d like to take part, find out more.