01/02/2015

Great poets have always beguiled and inspired us

and none more so than Scotland's favourite son, Robert Burns,

whose memory we're here to celebrate tonight.

His appeal is global but it would be difficult to find anywhere

in the world with a stronger connection than here in Ulster.

The audience have been called to take their seats.

The Ulster Orchestra have tuned up.

Backstage, the artists, including Scottish Singer of the Year,

Emily Smith, are making final preparations.

With Emily, we have Eilidh Patterson,

we have the Berna Folk Band,

we have Marcus and Matthew Wenlock, World Champion drummers,

and we have the Markethill Dancers.

Welcome to Burns Night at the Waterfront Hall.

PIPE MUSIC

APPLAUSE

Ladies and gentlemen, please give an Ulster welcome

to Scots Singer of the Year, Emily Smith.

Good evening.

We're going to start with a song called The Plooman,

which has a chorus.

You're very welcome to join us but it would take me

a long time to teach it to you, so we haven't got time for that.

We'll just have to go for it.

# The plooman, he's a bonnie lad

# His hairt is ever true, jo

# His garter's knit below the knee

# And his bonnet, it is blue, jo

# Then up wi' and all my plooman lads

# Hey my merry plooman

# O aa the trades that I dae ken

# Commend me tae the plooman

# My plooman, he comes hame at nicht

# He's often wet and wearie

# Take aff the wet, put on the dry

# And go to bed my dearie

# Then up wi' and all my plooman lads

# Hey my merry plooman

# O aa the trades that I do ken

# Commend me tae the plooman

# I will wash my plooman's sark

# And I will wash his o'erlay

# I will mak my plooman's bed

# And cheer him late and early

# Then up wi' aa all my plooman lads

# Hey my merry plooman

# O aa the trades that I dae ken

# Commend me tae the plooman

# Well I've been east and I've been west

# And I've been at St Johnstone

# But the bonniest sicht that e'er I saw

# Was my plooman laddie dancin

# Then up wi' and all my plooman lads

# Hey my merry plooman

# O aa the trades that I dae ken

# Commend me tae the plooman

# Snaw white stockings on his legs

# Siller buckles glancing

# A guid blue bonnet on his head

# And oh but he was handsome

# Then up wi' and all my plooman lads

# Hey my merry plooman

# O aa the trades that I dae ken

# Commend me tae the plooman

# Commend me tae the barn yard

# And the corn mou man

# Oh, I never got my coggie fou

# Til I met wi my plooman

# Then up wi' and all my plooman lads

# Hey my merry plooman

# O aa the trades that I dae ken

# Commend me tae the plooman. #

APPLAUSE

When I first became a traditional singer,

interested in traditional songs,

I kind of ran in the opposite direction of Burns' work

because I thought I knew all there was to know about him,

I thought I knew everything he had written.

But it wasn't until 2009, his 250th anniversary

that myself and Jamie McLennan decided to do something

to mark that occasion so we recorded an album

of lesser known works by Burns

and particularly trying to source songs that he wrote

within Dumfriesshire or about people from his time in the south-west.

I just had this whole new appreciation for him.

To have died so young, he wrote so much.

You seem very comfortable in front of an orchestra

as well as an audience, how is that for you?

I'm good at acting!

It's fantastic, this is the first time I've performed

with an orchestra, so it's really exciting

and it really puts a whole new dimension onto your performance

and to hear songs that myself and Jamie have done

just as a duo, having orchestration behind it is really fun.

We're going to carry on with a song called the Silver Tassie.

This one Burns wrote about a sailor boarding a ship,

leaving from the Port of Leith just outside Edinburgh,

and he calls for one final toast farewell to his sweetheart, Mary,

so it's called the Silver Tassie.

# Gae bring to me a pint o' wine

# And fill it in a silver tassie

# That I may drink afore I go

# A service tae my bonnie lassie

# The boat rocks at the Pier o'Leith

# Fu'loud the wind blows frae the ferry

# The ship rides by the Berwick-law

# And I maun leave my bonnie Mary

# The trumpets sound

# The banners fly

# Oh, the glittering spears

# They are ranked ready

# The shouts o war

# Are heard afar

# And the battle closes deep and bloody

# It's not the roar o sea or shore

# Wad make me langer wish to tarry

# Nor shouts o war

# That's heard afar

# Oh, it's leaving thee

# My bonnie Mary

# It's leaving thee

# It's leaving thee

# Oooh, oh

# Oooh, oh

# Oooh, oh. #

APPLAUSE

I'm Matthew and I'm the Juvenile 2 MSR world champion.

And I'm Marcus Wenlock

and this year I won the Juvenile 3 MSR world title.

And Matthew, how do your friends react to seeing you on the telly

and seeing you winning world championships

and seeing lines of girls outside your house,

screaming like it's One Direction?

I think they're a bit jealous.

They always taunt me at school.

Like, "You're always doing this, you're always doing that."

Tell me about the track that you're playing tonight.

It's a Bulgarian folk dance

and it was wrote by Gavin Bailey,

who passed away last year.

It's quite complicated,

as there's different changes in time signatures

which means there needs to be a lot of thought to what you're playing.

It's quite complicated to what we usually play.

Marcus, this is a very important question

and a lot of people want to know this.

Who is the best drummer between the two of you?

Well, that's for everybody to find out tonight.

Matthew and Marcus Wenlock

are going to engage in a drum battle to the Buschimich track.

These world title winning brothers made drumming history

by becoming the first brothers to win world titles in the same year,

and both brothers played their way to getting perfect scores

of first place across the board, from all the judges.

I give you Matthew and Marcus Wenlock.

APPLAUSE

APPLAUSE

We've enjoyed Emily Smith's wonderful renditions of Burns' work,

and we'll hear more from her shortly.

Emily was born and reared in Dumfriesshire in Scotland,

which was Burns' stomping ground.

So we have asked Emily to give us a whistle-stop tour.

So this is Thornhill in Dumfriesshire.

And I grew up in a wee village just outside Thornhill.

This would be one of the busier villages

towards the north of Dumfries and Galloway,

so Burns would have frequented here a lot,

and on his way north up to Ayrshire.

My inspiration for traditional music really probably stemmed

from Robert Burns and his work.

And what continues to draw me back to his work

is that he walked and rode these same roads

that I see on a daily basis.

The same landscape, the same villages, the same place names.

A couple of miles north of Thornhill is Durisdeer.

I have lots of childhood memories of coming to Durisdeer

when I was wee, and going walks.

You can go a walk in any direction here

and the views are just beautiful.

So Burns would certainly have come up and down here quite a few times.

This road is called the Lang Glen.

And Burns referred to it in his poem, Last May a Braw Wooer.

"Last May a braw wooer cam doon the lang glen,

"And sair wi' his love he did deave me.

"I said there was naething I hated like men

"The deuce gae wi'm to believe me, believe me

"The deuce gae wi'm to believe me."

When Robert Burns was 29 he moved from Ayrshire to Ellisland Farm,

which is, again, in Dumfriesshire,

and he farmed the land here for three years.

But he wrote some of his most famous works here, Tam O'Shanter,

the fantastic poem, one of my favourite poems ever,

and Auld Lang Syne was also another work that he wrote here at Ellisland.

The River Nith is our largest river in Dumfriesshire.

It flows right past Ellisland Farm where Burns would have lived.

You can walk along from Ellisland up to a place called Friars' Carse,

and Friars' Carse was the mansion home of a man called Robert Riddell,

who was one of Burns' associates, and he would come and visit him here.

Robert Riddell built a summer house

which was called the Friars' Carse hermitage.

And he let Burns go and use that building as a place to work.

Coming from Dumfriesshire

and the same area that Burns lived in I am immensely proud.

I feel like an ambassador for his work

and it is always such a pleasure

to see how far reaching his name has gone.

It is amazing, actually, the countries we go to,

and you can still find a Burns club,

people that are still learning his work.

He was such an amazing man.

# Simmer's a pleasant time

# Flowers of every colour

# The water rins o'er the heugh

# And I long for my true lover

# Aye waukin-o

# Waukin still and weary

# Sleep I can get nane

# For thinking on my dearie

# Aye waukin-o

# When I sleep I dream

# When I wauk I'm irie

# Sleep I can get nane

# For thinking on my dearie

# Aye waukin-o

# Waukin still and weary

# Sleep I can get nane

# For thinking on my dearie

# Aye waukin-o

# Lanely night comes in

# A' the lave are sleepin

# I think on my bonnie lad

# And I bleer my een wi' greetin

# Aye waukin-o

# Waukin still and weary

# Sleep I can get nane

# For thinking on my dearie

# Aye waukin-o. #

APPLAUSE

Bernagh, the track you are playing tonight, El Otro Finisterre,

tell me about that.

Well, that's a very appropriate piece

for a night like tonight

because it has got a big Celtic Connections orientation, really.

It basically means, "The other Finisterre",

Finisterre being a kind of Land's End of Brittany.

And it was a piece written by a Breton composer

for a Galician piper, Carlos Nunez.

And it has got that whole bagpipe connection,

you know, from Galicia, Brittany, Land's End and Cornwall,

Ulster Scots, bagpipe player...

It is just the right thing to bring it all together.

APPLAUSE

The next number was composed by someone here in this hall tonight.

Someone up here on this stage, in fact.

Our conductor, John Logan,

and I think I'll let him tell you all about it.

John.

Thank you very much and good evening, Belfast.

It's nice to turn round to see an audience,

because most of the time you look at my back.

How do I look from behind, by the way? Is it OK?

LAUGHTER

Actually, maybe I should... How do I look from the front?

Maybe I look better from behind.

Tiree is the next piece that we're going to play,

and it is a composition of mine.

Tiree was born from an education project.

I had to go to Tiree and work with some fantastic schoolchildren

and I thought, "What am I going to do?"

So I wrote a little theme called Tiree

before I took it up into the island.

It has grown some arms and legs.

It's been used in film and all sorts. I hope you enjoy it.

Please welcome to play the solo line, Emily Smith.

-Eilidh.

-Yes.

This is your first performance in public of a Burns song.

It's Ae Fond Kiss. What will make yours so extra special?

Well, I'm basically just going to sing it straight.

I've never sung Burns before,

so I'm a bit apprehensive about adding too much to it.

It's a beautiful melody, beautiful lyric

and I think I'm just going to sing it in my own voice and that's

what will make it different from other versions you may have heard.

Burns wrote the song for Nancy.

Nancy was absolutely crazy about Robert Burns.

He managed to get over her, I think, pretty quickly,

but she, for 40 years, brought into her diary on the date that she

last saw him, saying, "This is the last day I saw Robert Burns."

And for 40 years, she wrote that into her diary,

so her heart was broken well and truly

and she was the one who kind of got the wrong end of the deal.

# Ae fond kiss, and then we sever

# Ae fareweel, and then for ever!

# Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee

# Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee

# Who can say that fortune grieves him

# While the star of hope she leaves him?

# Me, nae cheerful twinkle lights me

# Dark despair around benights me

# I'll ne'er blame my partial fancy

# Nothing could resist my Nancy

# For to see her was to love her

# Love but her, and love for ever

# Had we never lov'd sae kindly

# Had we never lov'd sae blindly

# Never met or never parted

# We had ne'er been broken-hearted

# Fare-thee-weel Thou first and fairest!

# Fare-thee-weel Thou best and dearest!

# Thine be ilka joy and treasure

# Peace, enjoyment Love and pleasure

# Ae fond kiss, and then we sever!

# Ae fareweel and then for ever!

# Thine be ilka joy and treasure

# Peace, enjoyment Love and pleasure

# I'll wage thee

# Ooh-ooh...

# I'll wage thee. #

APPLAUSE

Thank you.

It's been a great night so far with the Ulster Orchestra,

Bernagh and Emily Smith.

But we've also had pipes and drums here as well.

A lone piper and drummer brought on the haggis,

and the audience were jolted when 43 young pipers came through

the auditorium from the Ulster-Scots Agency Juvenile Pipe Band.

The band was formed just three years ago,

and we caught up with them recently to find out a little bit more.

They never really have one collective band practice.

The only time they see each other is at an event.

We teach them skills and run classes.

A class in Raphoe, a class in Clogher,

a class in Belfast.

And we pull them all together for the events.

They're very good attenders,

they do travel all over the country to take part in these events.

Concerts, festivals.

'I've been playing in the band'

for a year and a quarter.

'You get lots of opportunities, like going to the Walled City Tattoo,'

er...competitions

'and loads of concerts, like the Waterfront.'

It's about the children enjoying themselves. It's light-hearted.

Although we are pushing the children to be very good on their instrument,

we let them get there themselves.

We do encourage the children to go to competing bands,

but if they don't want to do that,

that's absolutely fine. There is some children are just with us.

They have to leave us at 18.

We hope that we give them the bug for playing these instruments.

I played at the Waterfront last year

with the Ulster Orchestra, and it was loads of fun,

because we got to

interact with the orchestra,

and it was really different from everything I've done before.

Yeah, I'm really looking forward to it again.

RAPTUROUS APPLAUSE

One of the songs you're singing tonight is John O'Dreams.

Now that's not a Burns song. Why?

Well, I just thought, whenever I've heard that song,

and whenever I sing it, I always think of him,

because the lyrics are actually written by a songwriter

called Bill Caddick, and the piece of music he set his lyrics to

are from a piece by Tchaikovsky,

so it's got quite a history to it, but in the second last verse,

is... "Both man and master in the night are one,"

you know, and it's the bit about the prince and a slave man.

Everyone's free, at the end of the day.

And that just really rings true with so much of what Burns wrote.

And he was a real voice for the people.

And his work could stretch across the classes

and across divides, so it just always reminds me of Burns.

# When midnight comes and people homewards tread

# Seek now your blankets and your feather bed

# Home comes the rover His journey's over

# Yield up the night-time to old John O'Dreams

# Across the hill The sun has gone astray

# Tomorrow's cares are many dreams away

# Your stars are flying Your candle's dying

# Yield up the night-time to old John O'Dreams

# Both man and master in the night are one

# All men are equal when the day is done

# The prince and ploughman The slave and freeman

# Both find their comfort in old John O'Dreams

# When sleep, it comes And dreams are running clear

# The hawks of morning cannot reach you here

# Sleep like a river Flows on forever

# And for your boatman Choose old John O'Dreams

# And for your boatman Choose old John O'Dreams

# Ooh-ooh-ooh

# Ooh-ooh-ooh

# Ooh-ooh-ooh

# La-la ooh-ooh. #

Thank you very much.

Well, this last song of our little set here is called Gala Water.

Burns not only wrote poems and songs,

but he was a great song collector, to which we owe a great debt.

So, this is one that he collected from the town of Galashiels.

This is called Gala Water.

# Braw, braw lads on Yarrow braes Rove among the blooming heather

# But Yarrow braes Nor Ettrick's shaws

# Can match the lads o' Gala Water

# Oh, braw, braw bonnie lads-o

# But there is ane, a secret ane

# Aboon them a' I loe him better

# And I'll be his, and he'll be mine

# The bonnie lad o' Gala Water

# Oh, braw, braw bonnie lads-o

# Although my faither wasnae laird

# And though I hae nae meikle tocher

# Yet rich in kindest, truest love

# We'll tent our flocks by Gala Water

# Oh, braw, braw bonnie lads-o

# It ne'er was wealth It ne'er was wealth

# That coft contentment peace or pleasure

# The bands and bliss o' mutual love

# O, that's the chiefest world's treasure

# Braw, braw bonnie lads-o. #

WHOOPING

WHOOPING

WHOOPING

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

Stalked by debt and illness, Burns died at Dumfries on 21st July 1796,

aged just 37.

Tonight, over 200 years later,

we honour the immortal memory of Burns.

We hail the great bard,

who still touches a chord in every Ulster-Scot heart.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being a wonderful audience tonight,

and together, we'll remember Rabbie Burns.

# Should auld acquaintance be forgot

# And never brought tae mind

# Should auld acquaintance be forgot

# For auld lang syne

# For auld lang syne, my jo

# For auld lang syne

# We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet

# For auld lang syne

# And surely ye'll be your pint stowp

# And surely I'll be mine

# And we'll tak a richt gude-willie-waught

# For auld lang syne

# For auld lang syne, my jo

# For auld lang syne

# We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet

# For auld lang syne

# Should auld acquaintance be forgot

# And never brought to mind

# Should auld acquaintance be forgot

# For auld lang syne

# For auld lang syne, my dear

# For auld lang syne

# We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet

# For auld lang syne

# And there's a hand, my trusty fiere

# And gie's a hand o' thine

# We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet

# For auld lang syne

# For auld lang syne, my dear

# For auld lang syne

# We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet

# For auld lang syne

# For auld lang syne, my dear

# For auld lang syne

# We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet

# For auld lang syne. #

WARM APPLAUSE AND CHEERING