A new film featuring music inspired by the wild and remote landscapes of Scotland is set to premiere online at this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe. When These Rocks Were Still Young features stunning landscape photography, alongside incredible live performances from Scottish composer and percussionist Oliver Cox, with award-winning Gaelic vocalist Julie Fowlis.
Part performance, part documentary, this immersive journey through music and film into the magnificent and ancient landscapes of Scotland, showcases Cox’s beautiful score for voice, piano, percussion, and electronics, featuring Fowlis as co-writer and performer. By turns haunting, pulsing, and contemplative, Cox’s music is hugely evocative. Celebrating a deep and intimate connection to nature, the film and its score is a meditation on his own experiences of place, land and sea.
The project was created out of an extended road trip around Scotland undertaken by Cox in Autumn 2019. Searching for a new artistic outlet and a way to connect with Scotland’s wild places, Cox created a mobile studio in the back of a campervan and set off around the Highlands and Islands. Embarking from his home in North Berwick, Cox spent five weeks on the road, walking, writing music, immersed in changing locations across Scotland, visiting the Cairngorms, Assynt, the Isles of Harris and Skye, the Ardnamurchan peninsula, Glencoe and Glen Etive, and the Perthshire valleys around Loch Tummel, Loch Rannoch and Schiehallion.
Composing and recording on the road, Cox returned home with the fragments of music and plans to develop a full work for film and concert performance. However, the advent of the coronavirus pandemic necessitated a change in direction, with the work reconceived as an immersive film featuring performances and music, written at intervals across 2020 and 2021. Inspired by the poetry of Gaelic song and its connection to many of the places he visited, Oliver invited Julie Fowlis to become part of the project, collaborating remotely with her to create the final score. The resulting work features nine movements in total, each inspired by the places, landscapes, and elements of nature experienced by Cox both on his journey, and at home during lockdown, infused with the words and rhythms of Gaelic song.
Oliver Cox is a composer and percussionist from Edinburgh. He has performed all over the world as both concerto soloist and chamber musician, primarily with percussion duo, O Duo, which he co-founded in 2000 at the Royal College of Music, London. He has performed multiple times at the BBC Proms, given several recitals at the Wigmore Hall, and has performed many times at the Edinburgh Fringe, in particular as a young musician.
This is his first collaboration with Julie Fowlis. Julie is a multi-award-winning Gaelic singer from the Outer Hebridean island of North Uist. With a career spanning five studio albums and numerous high-profile performances and collaborations, her voice has enchanted audiences around the world.
Oliver Cox said: ‘Scotland’s landscapes and wild places have always inspired me, both in terms of their obvious beauty, but also in a deep, visceral way. Spending time in the wilderness puts me in touch with parts of myself which don’t often show up when in the city. When I first conceived the idea for this piece in Autumn 2019, I had no concept that what I would end up making was a film, especially one created during a global pandemic that would debut online at the Edinburgh Fringe. Writing and collaborating remotely with Julie and the team at Webb St Studios has taken my music in directions that I couldn’t have imagined two years ago. Now the project not only reflects my journeys around Scotland, but the time spent at home during lockdown, when many of us experienced and re-discovered the places where we live in new ways. I hope audiences share this sense of inspiration, and feel a connection to Scotland, wherever they are watching.’
Julie Fowlis added: ‘It has been a joy to meet and work with Oliver on this inspiring project. He is such an intuitive and dynamic musician, and a true collaborator. This is a project which is close to his heart, and for me, it’s been inspiring creating music with him, especially during the pandemic. Our joint works offer a deep and emotional response to the landscapes of Scotland, and we truly hope people will enjoy them.’
When These Rocks Were Still Young is available to watch for free on-demand from Wednesday 18 – 31 August 2021 on the Fringe online player at this link.