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NEW CD - OUT NOW!
A new CD of John’s music, Consider the Story, is now released. It joins the three previous CDs, Dreaming of Islands, Circus Suite, and Bannockburn. All are released on John’s own label and are available from the shop. The world-famous Brodsky Quartet headline an outstanding array of performers ‘from a’ the airts’ in this latest CD, bringing an immaculate and powerful performance of his accomplished and moving String Quartet ‘Kalavrita’. The eclecticism is not confined to the performers, and on this latest offering you can never be sure what you will hear next. There’s a sonata for trombone and piano, two vocal works – including settings from Spenser’s Faerie Queene – Silver Reflections for cello and piano, as well as works for Māori musical instruments with bassoon, and Lament for a Chickadee for solo carillon,. John’s music has been described as “heartfelt, clear, rugged and peculiar”, and that is pretty much spot on. |
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NEW POETRY BOOK
This Much Endures is the title of John’s latest book of poetry, just out from Kennedy & Boyd and available from the shop on this website, where you can also buy his previous collection There Is No Night. The poems of This Much Endures are presented in four groups: Ancient Voices; Two Hunterian Poems; Amoretti; and Dedications. Fiona Stafford of Somerville College, Oxford, wrote the Introduction. Here are two quotations from it: “From first to last, the voice of the poems speaks with the economy of tested truth: utterly assured, utterly convincing.” “The volume’s overall truth derives as much from the poet’s understanding of the pain and injustice of the world as from his recognition of what helps to combat the darkness. A life-enhancing preoccupation with endurance depends on a hard-won sense of what is to be endured.” |
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Uamh an Òir (The Cave of Gold) at Bornesketig, Skye. Photo © Sean Purser
In 2020, John published Window to the West - the result of a fifteen-year collaboration with his colleague at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig (the Gaelic College on Skye), Dr. Meg Bateman. It’s published free on the internet by Clò Ostaig.
"Its breadth and depth are astonishing. Window to the West is nothing less than a rounded portrait of Scottish Gaelic civilisation." (Ronald Black in West Highland Notes & Queries)
Writing Window to the West was a bit like entering the Cave of Gold. Nobody, including ourselves, could really believe we would ever emerge. The Cave of Gold is a mystical place full of irretrievable treasures and defended by monsters. Even pipers get lost for ever in it. In fact the only living thing to emerge from it was a dog whose hair had turned white. Culture and Environment in the Scottish Gàidhealtachd is the subtitle of our book and that means what it says.
I maintain that Meg and I swept aside all the monsters (mostly academic ones) and discovered cultural treasures beyond our wildest dreams. We’ve stolen nothing. They’re all still there in the cave, incredibly varied, but we’ve described and ordered them as best we may. Take a look here (it's a fairly large document so may take a few minutes to load).
"Its breadth and depth are astonishing. Window to the West is nothing less than a rounded portrait of Scottish Gaelic civilisation." (Ronald Black in West Highland Notes & Queries)
Writing Window to the West was a bit like entering the Cave of Gold. Nobody, including ourselves, could really believe we would ever emerge. The Cave of Gold is a mystical place full of irretrievable treasures and defended by monsters. Even pipers get lost for ever in it. In fact the only living thing to emerge from it was a dog whose hair had turned white. Culture and Environment in the Scottish Gàidhealtachd is the subtitle of our book and that means what it says.
I maintain that Meg and I swept aside all the monsters (mostly academic ones) and discovered cultural treasures beyond our wildest dreams. We’ve stolen nothing. They’re all still there in the cave, incredibly varied, but we’ve described and ordered them as best we may. Take a look here (it's a fairly large document so may take a few minutes to load).