Field trip to Scotland

A couple weekends ago we went on a field trip down to Edinburgh and Glasgow. While making our way up there, some of us stopped in a town called Durham. It was gorgeous. Everyone should visit this small beautiful town. Eventually we made our way to Glasgow where we stayed in a adorable hostel with a smirking superman painting on our door. Later the next day we met up with the rest of our class where we went on a guided tour of Glasgow and watched a performance in Edinburgh. The show was devised and performed by two women who explored the topic of life and death through creative use of props and metaphors. I wasn’t sure what to expect coming into this performance, but was blown away. It was a great creative piece which really impacted me, forcing the audience to reevaluate life, or at least for me this was the situation.

While in Glasgow, we saw a Gaelictronica concert, which was by far one of my favorite concerts of the trip. It combines “Gaelic vocal and instrumental music with electronica to create a unique fusion of traditional, ambient and dance sounds” (their description of it). We saw “Whyte”, a collaboration between Ross Whyte and Alasdair Whyte who created a series of pieces based on the works of female Gaelic songwriters of the 17th and 18th centuries. We also saw an artist named Shona Brown, who performed using looping technology and electronics to create interesting and beautiful soundscapes. The last group of the night was a group called “The League of Highland Gentlemen”. This was a combination of pipes, fiddles, guitars, bagpipes, and many more instruments. Throughout all the acts there were video projections on the screen they performed behind. It was beautiful, but at the same time the screens created a separation between the performers and audience members. Overall, it was a beautiful and engaging show, one that I will not forget anytime soon.

It was a great trip down to Scotland and I hope to be able to visit it again soon.