Innovative Scottish singer and songmaker Kirsty Law has announced her new audiovisual album project titled Young Night Thought. Named after a poem from Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses, the work explores the ‘inner child’ concept through folklore, film and original song. To do this Kirsty will be working with filmmaker Daniel Warren (Commonwealth 2014 Opening Ceremony main screen director, filmwork for Hanna Tuulikki’s Away With The Birds, Whatever Gets You Through The Night), record producer Ben Seal (UrbanFarmHand and Bella Hardy’s With The Dawn) and noted painter Kirsty Whiten. She shared the following video teaser and explained a bit more about the project to Folk Radio UK:
https://youtu.be/TUX-vKxtMxs
The creative process involves close collaboration between the artists involved – a passing back and forth of unfinished fragments of lyric, melody and film, leading to the eventual birth of the finished album, film piece and artwork.
The writing period of this project will also see myself and Ben Seal providing workshops for young children in conjunction with Scottish Borders based organistation, Soundcycle. These workshops will encourage a creative musical dialogue which will be mutually beneficial to both participant and tutor, informing the project creatively and giving the young ones an invaluable artistic experience.
Young Night Thought is a process-focussed work and as such, we want to invite our eventual audience to witness this process. So it is with much excitement that I can announce that we will be staging Young Night Thought : Part 1 at Celtic Connections festival 2017, on the 31st January in the Glasgow Concert Halls. This concert will showcase the opening chapter of our exploration, including original songs in their first incarnation alongside those which have inspired them, interspersed with pieces of fieldwork.
The show will contain a line up of acclaimed musicians from the Scottish music scene: pedal-harpist Esther Swift (Twelfth Day); fiddler and BBC Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year 2012 Rona Wilkie; Nordic mandola player Marit Fält (Vamm, Marit and Rona) and drummer Owen Curtis Williams (The Pictish Trail, Eagleowl, Rob St John, Two Wings). Together, alongside the filmwork, we will create a multimedia performance full of child-like tenacity, darkness and intrigue.
I am particularly excited to reveal that the finished album – which is scheduled to be released in Autumn 2017 – will also feature guest appearances from Karine Polwart, Jarlath Hendersonand Carla Easton of TeenCanteen.
Tickets available via: www.celticconnections.com
