
The SV Sharing Cultures Project
Scottish Voices with the Kentigern Quartet
Performances and Recording of 3 new pieces, including two premieres:
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Margaret McAllister: The Phantom of the Clouds
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Lewis Murphy: Voyager
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Graham Hair: Ecstasy & Enlightenment
The Kentigern Quartet
The Kentigern Quartet was formed in 2015 and takes its name from the founder and patron saint of the City of Glasgow. Violinists Barbara Downie and Feargus Hetherington, violist Nicola Boag and cellist Jessica Kerr bring their collective experience working at home and internationally to the ensemble.
The quartet has performed at many venues including Chamber Music at the Drake, the BBC Club at City Halls, Aberfoyle Music Club, Glasgow University, Cathedral of the Isles Millport, Glasgow Cathedral, St. Mary’s Cathedral and Renfield St Stephens (Glasgow), the Carrick Centre Houston, Tolbooth Stirling and in a number of informal house concerts. The Kentigern Quartet counts in its repertoire a wide variety of music from Janacek, Britten, Brahms, Ravel, Mendelssohn and Beethoven to Brubeck and Piazzolla.
The Voyager is the Kentigern Quartet’s recent commission from composer Lewis Murphy, which they premiered at Glasgow University in November 2019. The quartet would like to acknowledge the support of generous benefactor Roddy Neilson in commissioning this work,written in memory of Alexander William Neilson, and look forward to bringing this new music to audiences across Scotland.
2021 sees the Kentigern Quartet performing new works by Graham Hair and Margaret McAllister for string quartet with women’s voices, as an initial component of the Sharing Cultures project with the Scottish Voices ensemble, in Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Margaret McAllister
Margaret McAllister is associate professor at the Berklee College of Music in Boston and has been named a Fulbright Scholar. She is the 2019–2020 Fulbright-Scotland Visiting Professor at the University of Edinburgh’s College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, in the department of Celtic and Scottish Studies, and a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities. She will collaborate with distinguished Scottish poet Aonghas MacNeacail in creating a new work.
Margaret studied with Theodore Antoniou, Milton Babbitt, Lukas Foss, Oliver Knussen, Toru Takemitsu, and Joan Tower. She has received fellowships and residencies from the Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, the Festival at Sandpoint, Scotia Festival of Music, Centres Acanthes, Avignon, and the June in Buffalo Festival. She has received commissions and performances from many professional solo artists and performing ensembles, including the New Millennium Ensemble, Alea III, Boston Composers String Quartet, Tapestry, Krousis, Pandora’s Vox, Ives Quartet, Seraphim Singers, as well as on National Public Radio and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Margaret has received fellowships and residencies from the Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, the Festival at Sandpoint, Scotia Festival of Music, Centres Acanthes, Avignon, and the June in Buffalo Festival.