Results tagged “aberdeen” from The Sunday Mail - Jayne's Jaunts

This was tagged on to a previous post, but I think that it has become more important.

I am fairly bummed about the demise of the Sunday Showcase and Misssy M's film club; two things which, to me, were signs of the creative tide turning in Aberdeen.

Huzzah, a new era for Aberdeen where creative people are valued and supported by Aberdeen City and Shire.

The curfew flies in the face of some good work by the Arts department in the City Council to create more dialogue between creative practitioners in the North-East and encourage cross discipline collaboration. Also to create a support network which is self sufficient in creating opportunities for itself.

The proposed curfew IMO does not tackle the real problem, which is of flocks of drunk people coming out of clubs all at once.

• The Council should tackle the problem at the source, by penalising those licensees who serve alcohol to already-drunk people.


• Conversely, they should reward responsible traders with extra opening hours. This blanket approach didn't work in Glasgow, didn't work in Edinburgh, so why do they think it will work here?


• Bear in mind that there seems to have been virtually no consultation with existing licensees on the proposed curfew, despite the fact that the FOI documents that I received specified that a consultation should be arranged before taking the proposal any further.


• ACC have also ignored the initial suggestion by Aberdeen Taxis for the curfew to be one hour from closing and instead have made it 12.30pm for all pubs and clubs. Considering the lack of industry guidance on the issue and the suggestion by Aberdeen Taxis, there is no justification for the curfew to be that early.

I can't help but feel that Aberdeen was getting somewhere by means of supporting the arts, but now it is running a great risk of regressing.

Thanks to Andrew Learmonth and Misssy M and their work in
creating exposure for local bands and the North East in general.

They are two of only a few people that are trying to hold back
the tide; people with skills and artistry will probably want to pack
up and leave Aberdeen, and who can blame them.

Last wednesday was quite, er, interesting...

The university new music group is dedicated to performing works by new (or relatively new) composers from the 20th century onwards. During the concert at Kings College Chapel we were treated to a night of John Cage.

I don't know if you know much about John Cage, but he is the composer that is most famous for his work 4"33

Youtube clip

The funniest thing is that people try to not make a sound during the piece, and inbetween the movements you hear the culmination of all the coughs and splutters that people have been holding in for the past few minutes :-)

We were treated to some great John Cage pieces such as 'Scottish Circus', which it as times quite melodic, and sometimes it is all over the place!

There was also 'Litany for the whale' which was for four voices placed at different parts of the hall. The music was composed so that it should sound like whale song, and it was even better in the echoey acoustic of Kings.

Then there was the piece for four transistor radios. Even though with all these pieces you could go into a debate about whether or not it is music, this particluar performance of the transistor radios was just great. It was great simply for the fact that when one radio was 'playing' solo, it tuned into Northsound 1 and by sheer coincidence there was a news report on at the same time. I thought it was great as from this one excerpt of the performance you had a great sense of time and place.

Well done New Music Group, your concert was great fun :-)