STUART MACRAE, Composer
Stuart says:
‘When I read Treasure Island as a boy I found real fascination in the characters and the situations. There is a vividness about the way Robert Louis Stevenson told tales, the basic human emotions and relationships which are easy for people to understand. I want this quality in the opera.
I want to evoke lots of different emotions through the music. It won’t be too heavy, although it has dark moments, and not too light-hearted although it has moments of joy. Each of the seven scenes has a different musical sound world where the music portrays the overall atmosphere as well as the emotions of the characters. Each scene becomes a musical entity in its own right, identifying time, location and emotional state, creating a series of different worlds each with a unique musical location and flavour.’
Born in Inverness, Stuart MacRae is one of the most distinctive composers of his generation, writing music of elemental power and emotional subtlety. His works include a Violin Concerto (2001), Hamartia for cello and ensemble (2004) and Gaudete for soprano and orchestra (2008), all of which have been performed at the BBC Proms. His music often draws on structures and images of nature, characters from myth and the poetry of Ted Hughes, of which Gaudete is a large-scale setting.
Works for the stage include the opera The Assassin Tree (2006) to a libretto by Simon Armitage, and the dance-opera Echo and Narcissus (2007). He has collaborated with librettist Louise Welsh on two previous operas: Remembrance Day (2009), part of Scottish Opera’s Five:15 Operas Made in Scotland project; and Ghost Patrol (2012), a co-production between Scottish Opera and Music Theatre Wales. Ghost Patrol won a South Bank Sky Arts Award and was shortlisted for an Olivier Award.
Stuart’s music has been performed regularly at the Linbury Studio of the Royal Opera House and the Edinburgh International Festival, and by ensembles including the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, London Sinfonietta, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Scottish Ensemble and Hebrides Ensemble, as well as numerous orchestras in the UK and abroad.
Stuart was Composer in Association with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra from 1999 to 2003. He was resident composer at the Spannungen Kammermusikfest in Heimbach, Germany in 2003, and Edinburgh Festival Creative Fellow at the University of Edinburgh from 2005 to 2006. From 2006 to 2007 he was a resident composer at Internationales Künstlerhaus Villa Concordia in Bamberg, Germany. He teaches composition at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and at Edinburgh University.
Recent projects include Parable, a setting of Wilfred Owen’s poetry commissioned by Hebrides Ensemble. He is currently working on a new piece for the Choir of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, and a second piano sonata for pianist Simon Smith.
Find out more about Stuart here.
