Sir James MacMillan on the tenth Cumnock Tryst: 'I’ve delighted in proving people wrong'
When he launched the Cumnock Tryst music festival, people told Sir James MacMillan it wouldn’t work. Ten years on, however, it’s still going strong - and winning awards. Interview by Ken Walton
At this week’s inaugural Sky Arts Awards, Sir James MacMillan proudly accepted the classical music award on behalf of the Cumnock Tryst, the annual festival he founded a decade ago in his native town. “The Cumnock Tryst is blazing a trail for how a contemporary festival can have a deep and profound impact on its community,” trumpeted the glowing citation.
The composer echoed that in his own acceptance speech. “In an area of Ayrshire described as suffering from multiple deprivation I was told at the beginning that it’s not a place where an intense festival of classical music, jazz and folk music could happen. I’ve delighted in proving all these people wrong over the last ten years”.
With the milestone tenth Cumnock Tryst imminent - extended to five days this year (2-6 October) - it’s an opportune moment to ask MacMillan if such socio-economic ambitions were central to his initial plan, and whether he genuinely believes that the arts, and in particular classical music, can truly benefit the urgent needs of a post-industrial community.
“When we started ten years ago, the then Prince of Wales had bought nearby Dumfries House for the nation and on the back of that there was all this talk about regenerating a stricken mining community,” MacMillan recalls. “The time seemed right.”
“People say music doesn’t regenerate communities and in a sense I can understand it’s got to be the social workers, businessmen and politicians at the forefront, but I was convinced that a spiritual regeneration could be every bit as relevant.”
Fast forward ten years, and it’s clear MacMillan’s Festival has evolved with that in mind. Sure, his own international renown has lured classical music royalty to Cumnock, and will again this year with performances by, among others, virtuoso pianist Steven Osborne, the Maxwell Quartet, tenor Joshua Elliott, a cappella songsters the Gesualdo Six, and the launch of an ambitious new resident Cumnock Tryst Ensemble.
But ask him for his proudest Tryst moment and the answer is more grassroots. “It’s what we’re doing with community groups in our outreach programmes that has brought me the greatest satisfaction,” he insists. “Last year’s Big Saturday - the culmination of an ongoing coalfields project that brought together children’s choirs and ensembles, special needs kids and adult community groups in a day-long series of performances of their own songs with the BBC SSO - was one of the proudest moments of my life. It gave me sleepless nights, but the greatest satisfaction.” It also impressed the Sky Arts jury.
One of this year’s homegrown ventures, The Music of Land Reclamation (3 October), is a direct follow-up, bringing together compositions by music students at Cumnock’s Robert Burns Academy and a photographic project - Abstract Excavationism: The Art of Industrial Land Reclamation - by Borders photographer Simon Butterworth, better known in music circles as bass clarinettist with the BBC SSO.
“Simon took these wonderful drone pictures over open cast mines - also set to close - which capture incredible patterns on the ground created by this dying industry,” MacMillan explains. “His photos are like modernist abstract paintings, so we farmed them out to the school pupils as a starting point for the composition projects that form part of their Advanced Higher music curriculum.” The project has been co-led by young Ayrshire composer Gillian Walker, one of several emerging local composers nurtured at previous Cumnock Trysts.
Right now, the Tryst is riding high and attracting international visitors. “After ten years, people in Cumnock see that as a mark of pride”. But given Scotland’s current arts funding crisis, is MacMillan concerned about the future? It’s a terrible state of affairs, he says, but refuses to be too downhearted.
“Whenever I go abroad to talk about the Cumnock Tryst people are amazed and excited about it. I’ve done a lot of that in the States with a view to getting American funding and been pretty successful, which makes me think there’s always a way forward.
“More interestingly, Americans are also saying we are an exemplar for what could usefully be happening in similar communities there. Could we soon see little Trysts emerging overseas?”
Imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, MacMillan and his team are justifiably beaming with pride.
The Cumnock Tryst runs from 2-6 October, see www.thecumnocktryst.com
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