We’re very lucky as a quartet to have Angus’ home in Helensburgh.
We had a lovey time staying with his family to break up the journey from London/Berlin.The next day we started our trip up to Inverurie. (NOT Inveraray…)
First stop at Kemnay was the farmhouse cafe, where Merin helped himself to 4 butteries before realising how unhealthy they were.
We then had dinner with some trustees and organises of Inverurie music.
Inverurie were a fantastic audience of around 60 and were very surprised to see 4 trombones on stage at Kemnay Town Hall.
The concert went down a treat apart from 1 member of the audience that heckled when Merin called Loch Lomond a lake…!
Sylvia, was a fabulous host. We shared a bottle of wine and chatted until early hours of the morning.
Our long-awaited Scottish tour is upon us, and as we pile into the Renard-mobile for the lengthy drive from London to Bute, we fondly recall our visit to Coll just over one year ago. After 10 days on the island, we left with fond memories, a renewed joy in performing together and an increased sense of group identity, and we are thrilled to be returning to Scotland to share more wonderful music with the Scottish communities we will visit over the coming days.
Day 1: After a very wet and windy drive and our traditional lunch at Tebay service station, we enjoyed a
leisurely dinner close to Wemyss Bay before the ferry journey to Bute. On arrival, we checked in to our cosy accommodation and made friends with the resident dog before a short evening stroll along the coast to stretch our tired legs. Arriving at Rothesay in the dark meant we saw little of the island’s beauty until the following morning – needless to say, it was absolutely worth the wait! 
Day 2: Friday morning greeted us with stunning views across the water direct from the breakfast room of our B&B, and after embracing full Scottish breakfasts we were keen to get out and explore. A morning walk into Rothesay filled our lungs with fresh air, and the alternating downpours and bright sunshine gifted us a beautiful double rainbow which appeared to travel towards us across the water. Breaks from bustling city life in London are treasured, and it doesn’t get much better than this! After our walk and a delicious home-cooked lunch provided by trustees from Bute Arts Society (thank you John and Les!), it was time for some music-making. Trinity Church provided the perfect setting for our first performance, and the pre-concert picnic went down a treat. Bute Arts Society did a fantastic job drawing in audience members, and a good turnout created a real sense of occasion. Playing for such an enthusiastic, appreciative audience ended our first day on a high, and we crashed into bed ready to do it all again tomorrow!
Day 3: An early start and we were back in the Renard-mobile (affectionately coined the “Purple Panther”) for the drive to Rhubodach and ferry back to the mainland. The drive took us along the edge of the island, with stunning scenery all around. Sad to leave Bute but excited for the journey ahead, we make the 5-minute ferry crossing to Colintraive, before weaving through equally magnificent scenery all the way to Oban. Our hosts, Seymour and Molly made us feel very welcome in their beautiful home, and soon we were off to our next rehearsal. St John’s Cathedral is a fascinating space, famously half-built and later completed with the help of several remarkable steel buttresses, and it was a real pleasure to play there. We would like to extend special thanks to Oban Music Society Trustee, David, for taking a recording of our concert. The rest of the day was spent toasting in front of Seamus and Molly’s blazing fire, eating delicious food, and sharing many musical anecdotes.
Day 4: After a good rest we were sorry to leave the wonderful calm of Lerags House on Sunday morning, but Dunfermline beckoned and along with it – the final concert of our tour! After waving a hearty goodbye to Seymour and Molly we were on the road again, driving through lochs, hills and valleys to our final destination. A lunch break for toasties in Callander fuelled us for the remainder of the journey, and we arrived in Dunfermline with time to spare. A tasty pre-concert spread was laid on by Dunfermline Arts Guild, and after a short rehearsal our concert in the charming Viewfield Baptist Church was underway. During the interval we had some lovely conversations with audience members, one of whom shared fascinating first-hand memories of studying alongside Thea Musgrave, one of our featured composers! With a flourish and all too soon, our final performance of Piazzolla’s Libertango came to an end, and with it, our first Scottish tour.
We are extremely grateful to the Music Societies of Bute, Oban and Dunfermline for their exceptional hospitality and warmth, and to the Tunnell Trust for granting us the opportunity to tour and perform. Scotland is becoming somewhat of a second home for Ensemble Renard, and we can’t wait to return in February to share more music and make more memories in this beautiful part of the world.
A lovely appreciation of their time on Coll from the Asaka Quartet in their social media post.
We would like to thanks all three groups for making it such a special year on Coll. How great was it to be back playing to full audiences again and being able to enjoy the Island hospitality to the full.
Big appreciation post with lots of photos from our time on Coll with Tunnell Trust for Young Musicians last week! What an emotional and unforgettable experience!
A lot of tears, sweat and sand (still keep finding bits in our pockets) and many new friendships between different generations and instruments!
It was super nice to spend those days with our new friends Sylva Winds & Ferrante Quartet, happy to get a sandy photo! (Although no we didn’t contribute to the amazing sandcastle, don’t be tricked by Eriol holding the shovel proudly..)
Glad to also get a photo with our mentors Jonathan, Charles and Dickie (Scott we missed you!) and thanks @ Isle of Coll for the goodbye rainbow on the last day!
We’ve left now, and want to say the biggest thank you and goodbye to the people, the sheep, to every kind smile and word that made our time what it was – a dream.
Writing on the train back to London today, this is Inis Oírr, violist of Asaka Quartet. As a quartet, our story is very short; we’ve only just passed our 9-months-together landmark. We often joke that quartet is like marriage, and our marriage started sort of as a week of blind dating (sight reading and bashing through Mozart and Brahms) in October that suddenly led to a successful audition for the school’s quartet scheme, followed by a spiral of exciting and lucky events, and suddenly we’re here. I am in awe of what Tunnell Trust stands for and what Jonathan and his team support. To allow us onto the course and to push us many levels further than we thought we could learn to play, I feel completely trusted and (I hope I can say this without it being incredibly ironic), humbled.
Thank you Jonathan, Charles, Dickie, Scott and Tim for your guidance this week, you’ve taught us a bit more how to be humans and musicians, not just one or the other. I know we’re very emotional and noisy and uncultivated as a quartet, so apologies for the extreme crying and laughing this week (Charles, I didn’t mean to wail at you in the middle of your sentence and Dickie, I’m sorry for the lack of score which meant that you were forced to listen sadly with 100% attention to us sawing away at Mendelssohn.)
One of the mornings, Jonathan T and Scott kindly gave their time to sight read Brahms Sextet with us. The rest of that day, mysteriously, Jonathan (my cellist) and I had almost no intonation NoNos (seriously, we usually look at each other like WOAH when our unisons are exactly together, and that day was a day of 100 WOAHs). At the end of the day, I said to Jonathan (our Jonathan), ‘You did some scales or something right?’, and he said ‘Nope, I learnt today from playing with Jonathan T, the trick is, just don’t listen to anyone else, and it sounds gooooood’. (He explained wisely to me later that this is about trust – the struggle of the cellist is to trust his or her group to be able to tune to them! I definitely need Jonathan’s wisdom sometimes). So, I was SO happy that we begged (for real this time) Jonathan T to do a 10am Brahms bash with us!
I’m thinking of one more thing on the train right now: how can we recreate this week, or continue its spirit within our playing when we’re back in polluted busy London? It seems, the answer is actually ‘nothing different’. As a group, we do a lot of things. The evenings where we say ‘Okay, 45 mins to eat noodles then back to rehearsal’, and then we spend about 2 hours eating and laughing at each other. The serious meetings we have all the time where I bring my laptop and the others bring their frowns and we say ‘Okay, now we REALLY have to change the way we do things, it’s not good enough’ – these meetings could potentially be somewhat pointless alone, but after a collection of hours and hours of speaking (seriously, we talk A LOT), it feels like we’re brand new. We go a million times one way (too much talking) then maybe a bit more the other way (too much panic playing), and before you know it, we’re a different shape, maybe (hopefully), more flexible.
So, my summary is that Thank you Jonathan and your Tunnell Trust, because the time we have had this week has been really really invaluable and whilst felt like a second, was also a little timeless. We stretched in 10 different ways and back, and even sound a bit better than we did on day 1 woo! The company was great, eating sandwiches from the same tray as the violinist who calls your own viola teacher his ‘good friend from back in the day’, and joined by two wonderful groups, Ferrante Quartet (we could learn to sleep properly every night like them) and Sylva Winds (how do they make breathing look so easy!) all week. We hope to be back in Coll someday, instruments or not, perhaps with a better sense of what ‘Inis Oírr, pack some warm clothes it will be cold’ means and maybe a more balanced alcohol tolerance average within the group…
All the very very best,
– Inis Oírr, Asaka Quartet
When I’m not handling that precious wooden machine (viola), I usually have my little Canon camera in my hands, so now for the best bits of every book, the pictures!
Wednesday evening’s post-dinner-pub-trip was serenaded by some amazingly talented traditional- Scottish musicians. They were kind enough to let us, (and were actually very encouraging for us to) join in and try out playing with them.. so we shyly brought out our instruments. We fiddled around by ear, improvising on the harmonies and tunes as we went along, and they also had some of the reels written out which we perched on tables between all the drinks to play and bop along to as well. Sarah taught us how to play the bodhran (pronounced Bow – rawn) and we picked up the signals for the repeats of the tunes, and also for changing tunes (which is generally the highly complex gesture of someone kicking their leg in the air..) it was exhilarating to play in a style different to our usual and make new friends. However, I think what made it most special was how poetically intimate the setting was for connecting and communicating with other players and sharing a love of music with everyone around us. The vibe of the whole pub could be so obviously influenced by what we played – it could both get more rowdy when we played certain popular tunes as well as turn more contemplative when other more calm melodies were played. When we are almost always used to a culture of audiences sitting quietly and listening, it was wonderful to have the immediate connection with people around us and to bounce off their energy. Overall, it was a reel-ly fun evening and for us to have been able to join in with this music making was such a joy!
