Ilan Volkov returns to Tectonics Glasgow

The Tectonics festival returns to Glasgow this weekend, following its cancellation last year due to the Coronavirus crisis. Co-founded by Ilan Volkov, the event celebrates diverse new music by composers from around the world.

Volkov conducts the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in two live evening concerts and there will be performances throughout the weekend, with a varied programme that includes world premieres of works by Sky Macklay, Michael Parsons, Yu Kuwabara and Marc Yates.

Volkov's concerts with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 from 10pm, as well as on the festival's website. Saturday’s programme features works by Egidija Medekšaitė, Ian Findlay Walsh, Michael Parsons, Scott McLaughlin and Close Scrape (aka Matthew Wright and Adam Linson). Sunday evening offers works by Tania León, Hannah Ellul, Rebecca Wilcox, Arnulf Herrmann, Graciela Paraskevaidis, Olivia Furey with Lee Paget and Clive MacLachlan Powell. He discussed the programme on the In Tune programme (from 1:06).

In her article about the festival, BBC presenter Kate Molleson writes, ‘Tectonics is a platform for music that tests, probes and lingers in the margins. For music that refuses to conform. Sometimes (let’s face it!) some of the music doesn’t entirely work out. And yet the players of the BBCSSO embrace that risk, knowing that the alternative – confining themselves to the already-trod – would be much more dangerous.’

She writes of Volkov: ‘the BBCSSO has in Volkov a principal guest conductor with unparalleled capacity to inhale cutting-edge work and unearth neglected composers from across the globe. Whatever scores are on his music stand, he tackles them all with an equally take-no-prisoners directness.’

Since its inception in 2012 in Iceland, the festival has been staged 26 times around the world. Last year’s live event was cancelled due to the Coronavirus crisis.