A wonderful group of 80 singers gathered in the beautiful setting and acoustics of St Swithin’s Church in Bath for our second workshop with Ali Burns, Song Maker and Workshop Leader from South West Scotland. It was a rewarding day with a rich selection of songs, including Ali’s stirring new composition, In dangerous times:
In dangerous times, hold fast to courage
In dangerous times, hold fast to love
And sing, and rise above
In dangerous times, hold fast to love.
We also enjoyed a haunting setting of In the Bleak Midwinter, the simple and heart-warming round, Over the manger of my heart, and Ali’s uplifting song, The Earth, which uses a text drawn from her recent project, MacMath: The Silent Page. We rounded off the day with a lively gospel number, O the Winter will soon be over.
We look forward to Ali’s next visit to Bath. To ensure you receive details, please join our mailing list.
Ali talks about her work and approach: “My work is all about people singing together in harmony. I love the way that singing can unburden you from daily life and it’s this that inspires my workshops and my songwriting. I’ve always been fascinated by the sound of voices singing: it doesn’t have to be a great voice – in fact quite the opposite – I think I’m inspired just by the fact that people’s voices are so closely connected to themselves and that they are prepared to stand up and sing – this is me – this is what I sound like. And when you put many voices together, the strong support the weak and the whole is such a magnificent thing – so much larger than the sum of the parts. I want to recreate the richness of harmony that makes songs of oral traditions around the world so satisfying and joyful to sing but with words that root the work firmly back in my own culture.”
The songs Ali teaches in her workshops reflect a variety of sources: many are her own songs either with text she has written herself or settings of another writer’s words; some are from the research work she does in traditional song archives around Britain; some are from the many vibrant singing cultures around the world and some are written by other contemporary songwriters and composers.
Ali writes: “Songs and singing styles from all over the world are a huge inspiration to me and I certainly draw on them in my own writing but I’m constantly looking to bring that inspiration home and write songs that reflect my cultural heritage and life in Scotland. I’m drawn to elegantly sparse lyrics that leave the work with the listener.”
“Accessibility and musical simplicity also fascinate me: I enjoy writing for singers with no particular musical background and where the parts are simple and easily taught but still musically satisfying. Because I teach a lot of my own material in singing workshops I find that I’m writing and arranging all the time. I love songwriting – the juxtapositioning of text and melody constantly fascinates me, but I also write because I have to – it’s how I process the inner landscape of my life.”
“I’ve developed my own style of writing over the years. I’m interested in the early British folk hymn style of West Gallery music, developed after the reformation: one of the defining things of this style is that everyone has a great tune to sing and this suits my approach to workshops where I want every singer to go home with a great tune ringing in their head. I am not interested in the traditional western classical ways of harmonizing where often one part is based around three notes and perhaps another has a largely un-singable part that jumps between difficult intervals.”
“I’ve found over the last few years that by harnessing my attitudes to harmonizing along with folk text or imagery drawn from that text I’ve developed a style that people seem to recognize.”