Artist of the month: Stuart MacRae

Biography
The Assassin Tree

Stuart MacRae’s first opera, The Assassin Tree, makes its debut performance at the Edinburgh International Festival in August 2006.

Biography

Stuart MacRae was born in Inverness in 1976.  He studied music at Durham University with Philip Cashian, Sohrab Uduman and Michael Zev Gordon before going on to study composition at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama with Simon Bainbridge and Robert Saxton. Stuart’s acclaim as a composer has been growing since 1996, when he was selected as a finalist in the Lloyds Bank Young Composer’s Workshop.  His orchestral piece Boeraig was performed at the event by the BBC Philharmonic, conducted by Martyn Brabbins.  The following year, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies conducted the BBC Philharmonic in the first performance of The Witch’s Kiss.

Since 1996, Martyn Brabbins has premiered a number of Stuart’s works, including Landscape and the Mind: Distance, Refuge, as part of the 1997 BBC Symphony Orchestra’s Composers’ Forum, and the Violin Concerto at the 2001 BBC Proms with Tasmin Little as soloist.  The Violin Concerto was performed again in 2002 at the Edinburgh International Festival, this time by the Orchestre de Lyon, conducted by David Robertson.

Stuart’s relationship with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra grew between 1999 and 2003 when he was Composer-in-Association.  At the end of his term with the orchestra, Ilan Volkov conducted a Composer Portrait concert at the Tramway in Glasgow and included Stuart’s Stirling Choruses, Portrait II and the Violin Concerto.

Stuart has also composed a number of chamber pieces: his Piano Sonata has been recorded on Delphian Records, and 32 was broadcast on Radio France and performed in the Purcell Rooms at the Royal Festival Halls in London.  The Edinburgh Quartet gave the premiere performance of Stuart’s String Quartet, and his string trio One Man in his Time was premiered at the Spannungen Festival in Germany in 2003, before being performed alongside his Piano Quintet at the Barge Music concert series in New York by Chamber Domaine.  Arakne was performed by clarinettist Michael Collins and pianist Aleksander Madzar; the piece was a commission from the 2004 Cheltenham Festival.

Stuart has also won critical acclaim for a number of works for soloist and ensemble.  Interact was written in 2003 for trumpeter John Wallace and the London Sinfonietta, and Harmatia for solo cello and 12 strings was commissioned by the Scottish Ensemble.

In 2005, two significant pieces of work by Stuart MacRae were performed for the first time.  Two Scenes from the Death of Count Ugolino, a setting of passages from Dante’s Inferno, was commissioned by the Gulbenkian Foundation of Lisbon with support from the British Council.  It was performed in February and March 2005 in Lisbon and Birmingham, conducted by Susanna Malkki.  Three Pictures was commissioned by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and was premiered by the Orchestra in May, under the baton of Oliver Knussen.

In 2005/06, Stuart was the Edinburgh Festival/University of Edinburgh Creative Fellow.  The Creative Fellowship is run by the Edinburgh International Festival and Edinburgh University's Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and provides a bursary and work space at the Institute for the duration of the fellowship.

The Assassin Tree

Stuart MacRae’s first opera was co-commissioned by the Edinburgh International Festival and the Royal Opera House, and is a co-production with Scottish Opera.  The libretto was the first written by poet and playwright Simon Armitage.

The work is inspired by an ancient classical myth involving the King of the Wood and the goddess Diana.  In the retelling of the tale, the King Priest is Diana’s husband and protector who has grown old and weary.  The old man became the King Priest in the only way possible: as a freed or escaped slave, he murdered the King Priest before him.  He is now under threat from potential successors.  And his wife has grown tired of him too…

Gillian Keith, the Kathleen Ferrier Award-winning Canadian soprano, plays the role of Diana.  New Zealand baritone Paul Whelan is the King Priest.  The role of the Slave is performed by Peter van Hulle, who performs regularly with Scottish Opera, and Canadian tenor Colin Ainsworth is the Youth.  Garry Walker (Principal Guest Conductor of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Principal Conductor of the Paragon Ensemble and Music Director of the Liverpool Mozart Orchestra) will conduct a chamber orchestra of players from the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House.  Emio Greco and Pieter C. Scholten have created the design concept and will co-direct the Assassin Tree.

The Assassin Tree will be performed at the Royal Lyceum Theatre from Friday 25 – Sunday 27 August, at 8.00 pm.  The opera will be at the Lindbury Studio Theatre at the Royal Opera House from Wednesday 6 – Friday 8 September.  Before the performance on Saturday 26 August, Stuart MacRae and Simon Armitage will appear in a Conversations with Artists slot in the Hawthornden Lecture Theatre.  On Wednesday 23 August at 1.20pm, journalist Stuart Kelly and Hugh MacDonald, former Director of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, will give a Lunchtime Talk on the work of Simon Armitage and Stuart MacRae.

For more information on The Assassin Tree, visit the Edinburgh International Festival website.