NL premiere

Musician and composer Brìghde Chaimbeul joins with performance artists Maëva Berthelot and Temitope Ajose to present Where the Veil is Thin, an ode to an enigmatic character from Gaelic mythology. Through Chaimbeul’s wonderful playing of the Great Highland bagpipe and the revived Scottish smallpipes, she brings these instruments to life anew. Following a lineage that spans hundreds of years of a folk tradition that beckons the soul and the feet towards movement, Chaimbeul’s attentive compositions drag the bagpipe’s drones out from an ancient-sounding habitat to somewhere that feels utterly contemporary. The project, Where the Veil is Thin, encapsulates this contemporary nature through collaboration with the choreographers and performers Berthelot and Ajose. The performance explores what it is to be a creator and a destroyer, to be both feared and revered, based upon the figure of Cailleach Bheur – a mythological one-eyed giantess who lived for centuries on the Scottish island of Erraid and who is said to be responsible for the creation of the scenery and the harsh weather of the winter. Together, these artists share a story that evokes the eternal frictive dance between a landscape and those who are of it.

Where the Veil is Thin is developed in residence at Somerset House Studios and supported by PRS’s The Open Fund for Organisations

*This is a seated concert