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Playing the Skyline

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Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media: Arts

Musicians look at how the land meets the air and imagine it as music.

Tim Marlow joins musicians as they look at how the land meets the air and imagine it as music.

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Playing the Skyline: Series 1

Playing the Skyline: Series 1: Episode 3: Cumnock and Ben Wyvis

Factual

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Cumnock and Ben Wyvis

Episode 3

Episode 3: Cumnock and Ben Wyvis

Series 1

BBC Radio 4 - Playing the Skyline, Series 1, Cumnock and Ben Wyvis

James MacMillan plays a lowland skyline, Gaelic singer Julie Fowlis one in the highlands.

James MacMillan composes a piece tracing the skyline of Cumnock, his home pit village in Ayrshire, while Gaelic singer Julie Fowlis plays the skyline of Ben Wyvis in the highlands.

On old nautical charts as well as the bird's eye view there is often a coastal profile - the outline of the land seen from the point of view of a sailor approaching it. Radio producer Julian May was struck by the musicality of these, the undulations of hills are melodic, the spacing of landmarks - trees, church spires - rhythmic. Musicians could, he thought, take the line dividing sky from land, place it on manuscript paper, and play the skyline.

Half a dozen prominent musicians are intrigued by this, including jazz musician Courtney Pine, Anna Meredith, who was commissioned to create a piece for the Last Night of the Proms, Welsh pianist Gwilym Simcock and Kizzy Crawford eighteen, of Bajan heritage, a singer and songwriter at home in English and Welsh.

For Radio 4 Tim Marlow presents three programmes, in England, Wales and Scotland, in which two musicians look at the skyline, talk about their initial responses, then create a piece of music each - playing their skyline. He hears how they are getting along then the musicians, Tim (and Radio 4's listeners) hear for the finished pieces, and consider what they have made.

This final programme bucks the format somewhat to reflect the cultural realities of Scotland - lowland/highland, rural/industrial and Gaelic/English (or Scots). So James MacMillan plays, with help from local schoolchildren and musicians from the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the skyline Cumnock, the pit village in Ayrshire where he spent his childhood. Julie Fowlis, drawing on Gaelic poetry, traces in music the skyline of Ben Wyvis in Easter Ross.

Producers: Benedict Warren and Julian May.

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Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Presented by Tim Marlow. Musicians create a musical rendering of skylines.

Tim Marlow presents three programmes in which two musicians look at how the land meets the air and imagine it as music.

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Playing the Skyline

Series 1

Episode 3: Cumnock and Ben Wyvis

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