Claire M Singer

Old Kirk, Forgue

Neil Cooper

Five stars

“Not since John Knox called the organ a box of whistles has anybody played like this.”

So says Anthony Richardson from the Friends of Forgue Kirk introducing the opening concert of the Aberdeen based soundFestival 2024 twentieth anniversary programme of contemporary music. 

As Richardson indicates, Claire M Singer’s approach to the organ is unique, as the Aberdeenshire born composer has proved on her records for the Touch imprint. Drawing from Singer’s walks in the Aberdeenshire landscape, and with many works named after the Cairngorm hills that inspired them, this  makes for a quietly panoramic display. 

Singer’s most recent album, Saor, which translates from Scottish Gaelic as ‘Free’, was partly recorded in tonight’s venue, a striking hillside village church built in 1819. With Singer having discovered that some of her ancestors are buried here, this made tonight’s concert a very special homecoming on several levels. 

As the moon shines through the big windows beside the organ, Singer’s programme of five works brings fresh life to each existing piece. 

With a laptop perched beside her playing sampled cello parts, Singer opens the first half with Solas, the title track of her 2016 debut album that sets down a drone based ambient swell that permeates throughout all her work. The meditative ruminations of Solas in particular wouldn’t sound out of place in an after hours chill out room. 

Singer follows this with Diobaig, another piece from Solas that broods in quietly dramatic fashion. The Munro inspired Forrig from Saor comes next, making explicit the wide open spaces that pulse her work. 

Ode to Saor is a stripped down remix of sorts of the album’s title track, originally recorded on multiple instruments at Amsterdam’s Orgeloark, described by Singer as a ‘Disneyland for organists’. Here, Singer compresses things while retaining the original’s free spirited essence. 

The second half features just one piece, the twenty minute epic, Fairge. With Singer jamming chopsticks and clothes pegs onto the organ’s keys, her approach may be audacious, but there is an emotional warmth to the slow burning melodies that evolve out of this approach. 

The result is something by turns hypnotic, mesmeric and euphoric in a remarkable performance that sets the tone for the rest of soundFestival, which will be expanding aural experiences until October 27th, whatever John Knox might think.