Remembered/Imagined is a learning project, created through a spirit of “what if”. What if we asked Traditional music composers to write for Classical players? What would the challenges be in communicating between these two very different playing and reading cultures? What if we decided to work with poets, to explore language and music, what is the genre that is created somewhere between theatre, radio plays, performance poetry, storytelling and music? What if we wanted to work with all the different tongues and dialects in Scotland?
And what if we went into the School of Scottish studies?
A sweetie shop of old tales, voices, songs, photographs and memories. What if we tried to collaborate with people long gone, with part of our culture which is held in these glorious archives? And then what if we took those memories, and brought them through to our audience using technology, using the internet, mp3s, live samples, and live processing? What would happen?
And what if we asked three different pairs of composers and writers to try to do this? What would they find? How would they approach this, what would their relationships be like? How would the collaborations work? What balance between word and music would they find?
So we brought a collection of wonderful people together to find out, what if? Composers, writers and performers, all in one room, all doing the thing they do best, find a way to speak to each other, to share our languages, to make the thing, the thing of “what if”.
