Entertainment / Sturgeon to bring audio-visual trio performance to Mareel and Bigton
A SHETLAND based singer-songwriter is bringing an audio-visual performance to the stage for two gigs later this month.
Jenny Sturgeon will be joined by Grant Anderson (bass, keys, vocals, projection) and cellist Alice Allen at Mareel in Lerwick on 19 May and Bigton’s Hymhus the following day.
Sturgeon said it will be the first time she has performed her acclaimed live gig The Living Mountain in Shetland.
“I’m delighted to have received Shetland Arts performing arts commission funding to develop this performance for a trio for musicians and I am working with Shetland filmmakers JJ Jamieson and Liz Musser to create two unique performances for Shetland audiences,” she said.
The performance is inspired by Nan Shepherd’s celebrated book of the same name.
Shepherd was a Scottish writer, and her book The Living Mountain has been described as a “masterpiece of nature writing”.
Sturgeon’s performance is accompanied by film curated by Shona Thomson. This includes imagery from Scotland The Big Picture, filmmakers Robyn Spice and Hannah Bailey, archive film from National Library of Scotland Moving Image Archive as well as brand new imagery created for these Shetland performances by Jamieson and Musser.
Devised by musician Jenny Sturgeon, the project explores Shepherd’s writing, the Cairngorms and human connections with the wild through lyrical, melodic and visual interpretation.
The meditative experience of the combined audio and imagery are said to be a “soothing and poignant exploration of what it means to connect with a landscape and to find a sense of place”.
On its solo tours in 2021 and 2022 audiences in sold out venues across the UK enjoyed what was described as “beautiful and uplifting” (RnR Magazine) and an “outstanding piece of multi-media art… [where] inspired literature, gorgeously curated music and innovative filmmaking collide in a mosaic of integrated art” (Three Chords and The Truth – live review here).
Sturgeon’s album The Living Mountain was nominated for the Scottish Album of the Year awards in 2021, and in 2020 won the best acoustic prize at the Scottish Alternative Music Awards.
Tickets for both performances are available online.
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