'Scales Sails & Surf' - Innovative Music Project Supports Thurso Lifeboat

29th April 2012

A group of Caithness youngsters spent the first week of their Easter holiday working on a music project about the Pentland Firth, the world-famous tidal channel between Orkney and Caithness.

Over the years, the RNLI has often been called out from Thurso and Wick, as well as Longhope, Kirkwall & Stromness to deal with emergencies caused by the ferocious sea conditions in this part of Scotland. It was to honour this work that Piping Arts Limited and Caithness Horizons invited the Scrabster-based RNLI crew and volunteers to hold a fund-raising event during a concert performed in the Caithness Horizons museum exhibition hall at the end of the week-long project.

As research for creating music on the theme of the Pentland Firth, the children considered a wide range of uses of the tidal rip - everything from traditional creel-fishing to the current cold-water surfing scene that is emerging on Caithness waves. As well as meeting crew from the RNLI, they met local surfers, and got an insight into the thrill of standing upright in 'the Barrel' - the inside of a wave as it curls around and above a surfer's head.

Tutors Robert Aitken and Katrina Gordon were delighted to discover that the young musicians were more than capable of generating seveal new and original short pieces of music, which formed part of the overall performance. Working in groups that reflected the names of the Pentland Firth tidal whirls, The Boars of Duncansby, The Merry Maids of Mey and the Swelkie came up with titles such as 'Calm Down Sea', 'The Wobble on the Firth', 'Clett Tang', 'Forss Vik', Shark!' and 'Swell', reflecting themes, styles and tempo. William Campbell's technique on accordion offered a bellious foghorn, warning of the storm whipped up by other instruments, including fiddle, keyboard, percussion and a well-named wind section.

Katrina Gordon was also inspired to write three brand new pieces herself: 'New Energies', 'Sea Change' and 'In Memory of his Father Ingulf' - emerging from thoughts about one of the Caithness Horizons Viking collection exhibits, a Viking cross slab which may have been the grave-marker of a local Norseman. All-in-all, a reminder of the vast history of peoples and activities that have coloured life on and beside the Pentland Firth over generations, and a nudge to the future, with renewable technology looking to the Firth to power wind and wave turbines.

An appreciative audience was then treated to a performance of 'Last Footsteps of Home', a pre-recorded digital drama by Piping Arts director, Robert Aitken, with projected images suggesting an imagined girl's deperture from a Highland coast during the Clearances, made more haunting by an accompanying digi-pipe.

Although good-humoured, the presence of the lifeboat crew from Thurso's craft, 'The Taylors' - in full call-out kit, added a serious reminder of the uncontrolable force of the Pentland Firth. It may have been this that prompted the audience to give generously to those collecting donations toward the the work of the RNLI, a national and vital self-funded organisation that relies on the skill and self-lessness of the men and women who man the stations and lifeboats, along with hundreds of supporters who raise funds to keep things going.

'Scales Sails and Surf' was an enjoyable holiday project for twenty young people, and a gentle reminder of the elemental power, grandeur, and occasional danger of the Pentland Firth.