Aberdeen’s soundfestival gets underway with performers committing to ‘no-fly’ rule

UK music festival soundfestival, began last night with the first event in this year’s ground-breaking ‘no-fly’ edition of the festival. Opening less than two weeks before COP 26, the festival has the climate crisis as one its major themes with performers committing to avoid air travel.

‘We all need to do our bit to help combat climate change,’ says soundfestival director, Fiona Robertson, ‘and so this year we agreed with our UK and international performers that we would commit to a no-fly festival. They undertook to be as green as possible using trains, electric cars and even bicycles to come to Aberdeen.’

She added that ‘it is a great idea in principle. However, the reality of making this happen has demonstrated that if we are really serious about climate change a lot more needs to be done to make green travel both more practical and affordable, […] Not only is rail travel substantially more expensive than no frills flights, but the fragmented nature of the UK rail system makes it very time consuming to search out and get the best deals. And, as we discovered earlier this week even when using ‘green’ transport, things don’t always go to plan. It took one of our composers 22 hours to get from Derbyshire to Aberdeen by electric car because of broken or unavailable charging points.’

‘As if this wasn’t enough of a challenge, Eurostar refuses to transport double basses. The only viable option for our artist in residence, Florentin Ginot, and double-bassist Elise Dabrowski would have been to drive all the way from France to Aberdeen, as putting double basses in the hold of a plane is risky, and couriering them would be equally risky. Hardly climate friendly! We eventually decided to hire instruments for them, and had to bring them up from Glasgow at quite considerable cost.’

‘If we really are serious about committing to green travel then much more needs to be done to incentivise it, making it much more affordable and practical. Leadership from Governments on this is essential.’

The 2021 sound festival opened last night with the World Premiere of Distance featuring soprano Juliet Fraser in Aberdeen with Talea Ensemble streaming live from New York.

‘We actually conceived the idea before Covid, when we were exploring how we could still collaborate internationally in the context of a no-fly festival,’ says Robertson ‘The piece was specifically written by composer Laura Bowler to be performed in this way. It was a huge challenge for the performers, but shows that there are so many exciting ways that we can collaborate musically whilst minimising our impact on the planet.’

Other environment related events in soundfestival 2021 include specially-commissioned works from young and emerging composers and a performance of More More More, a piece by Mathew Herbert commenting on incessant consumerism which features performance on amplified rubbish.

soundfestival 2021 runs until Sunday 24 October. You can find out more at the festival’s website.