Our latest project, started in 2020, with support from Creative Scotland, features specially commissioned poetry and music, inspired by the 18^th century travels of the eminent literary duo Dr Samuel Johnson and James Boswell across northern Scotland and the Hebrides.  We worked with six brilliant Scottish based artists – poets Iain Morrison, Dawn Wood and Haworth Hodgkinson and composers Linda Buckley, Aidan O’Rourke and Gemma McGregor. The three resulting distinct pieces, Saltpetre, Ochan and Drift, look at the Scottish landscape and people then – and now.  As 2020 proved to be a year of disruption and necessary adaptation in so many aspects of life, so the project took on a new look and changed its course. Live performances became impossible, but plans gradually evolved to allow the atmospheric music and poetry to make their digital way into the world instead. The song cycle was recorded and mixed at Castlesound Studios in the summer and late autumn of 2021. We then stepped into previously unchartered territory and created a video for the work and, in Spring of 2022, No Trees to Whisper was premiered online. You can now view it here, – in 2023, the 250th anniversary of Johnson and Boswell’s inspirational journey.

We are grateful for the support of funding from Creative Scotland National Lottery, enabling us to undertake this project – and we hope you enjoy watching and listening.

Read about the poets and composers here