Conservation charity, the National Trust for Scotland has confirmed the performers who’ll be making its online Burns celebration – the Burns Big Night In – even bigger and better for January 2022.
Siobhan Miller, Laurie Cameron, Nevis Ensemble and Nae Plans will provide the music for the night.
Janette Ayachi, Jenny Lindsay and Michael Pedersen will be bringing the spoken word to life with fresh interpretations of Robert Burns’s work and presentations of their own from Alloway, the birthplace of Robert Burns, on Saturday 22 January 2022. In the words of Michael Pedersen, it’s set to be ‘a whole gallimaufry of fantabulous poetry, music & lore’.
Caroline Smith, the National Trust for Scotland operations manager at the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum in Alloway said: ‘This is a really vibrant programme full of top Scottish-based talent and they’ll help us celebrate the Bard in 21st century-style. We’re proud to be bringing this celebration from the place where Burns was born, to those who love him, all over the world.’
The Burns Big Night In made its debut in January 2021 when coronavirus restrictions meant that in person celebrations at the charity’s Robert Burns Birthplace Museum couldn’t take place. Traditionally, the National Trust for Scotland site which includes the humble cottage where Burns was born on 25 January 1759, the Brig o’Doon and Auld Kirk, as well as 5000 Burns’ artefacts, is a place of music, poetry, food and partying in January.
It will be hosted once again by Edith Bowman, the DJ and presenter launched the Burns Big Night In 2022 last week by inviting the public to record themselves reciting To A Mouse, one of Robert Burns’s most popular poem and submitting it to be part of the broadcast. A selection of recordings will be edited together into a video to be shown on the night to an audience of Burns fans from around the world.
Edith Bowman started the ball rolling with the opening lines of the poem.
She said: ‘I am so pleased to be heading back to Alloway for an even bigger and better Burns Big Night In for 2022. It’s really exciting to be able to offer Burns fans from all over the globe the chance to connect with the birthplace of the Bard, and to add their performance to proceedings for this special celebration.’
The Nevis Ensemble
To A Mouse videos should be submitted as landscape MP4s to bbni@luxevents.co.uk by Wednesday January 12. The full text of the poem is available to download at https://burnsbignightin.org/.
Tickets for the Burns Big Night In are available to buy online now and people can also snap up limited edition ‘Boxes of Braw’, which include goodies such as whisky miniatures, a family ticket to Robert Burns Birth Museum and a copy of To A Mouse.
More than 2600 viewers from around the globe tuned in for the first ever Burns Big Night In on 23 January 2021. Broadcast live from Burns Cottage, the event featured a mix of music, song and poetry, as well as conversation about Robert Burns’s life, work and legacy. Performers included Kevin Williamson, Talisk, Iona Lee and Jenn Butterworth & Ross Ainslie.
The full 2022 programme is:
Janette Ayachi is a Scottish-Algerian poet. Her first full poetry collection Hand Over Mouth Music (Pavilion) won the Saltire Poetry Book of the Year Literary Award 2019. She is currently working on Lonerlust, a memoir about travelling alone searching landscapes, culture, desire & human connection.
Perth-born musician Laurie Cameron’s fondness for her Scottish roots is at the heart of her latest studio project, recorded and produced in Edinburgh with Idlewild’s Rod Jones. ‘Something In Us Never Dies’ is a collection of modern reinterpretations of poems, songs and letters written by Robert Burns in the 18th century, set to new and original music. The album steers away from his already renowned classics, instead presenting lesser-known works of Burns in a modern, synth-folk mood. Laurie’s debut album, ‘The Girl Who Cried for the Boy Who Cried Wolf’ made the Sunday Herald’s Top 10 Scottish Albums of the Year and her work has frequent airplay on BBC Radio Scotland’s Ricky Ross and Roddy Hart Shows. Laurie’s music has been licenced internationally on television including UK TV series Hollyoaks.
Jenny Lindsay is one of Scotland’s best known spoken word performers. Described as “one of Scotland’s finest cultural innovators,” (Gutter Magazine), her own poetry, performance and film-poetry has won multiple accolades including a John Byrne Award for Critical Thinking (2020) Her latest work This Script, which exists in print, as a stage show, and in film, was described as “one of this year’s most necessary spoken word performances” by Becca Inglis and as “genius” by The Scotsman.
Nae Plans is the daredevil, off-the-cuff folk show featuring two Scottish folk musicians of the highest calibre. Taking their cue from the spontaneity of the traditional music session, two of Scotland’s finest musicians, Hamish Napier (piano, flute, whistle, vocals) and Adam Sutherland (fiddle), sit down on stage without knowing what they will play. It makes for a seat-of-the-pants, incredibly exciting experience for both listener and performer, putting the audience at the centre of an energetic, dynamic and engaging performance which captures the duo’s raw creativity and outstanding musical intuition.
Nae Plans
The award-winning Nevis Ensemble is different; there’s nothing else quite like it. Its vision is ‘music for everyone, everywhere’. Artistically-led by Holly Mathieson and Jon Hargreaves, Scotland’s first street orchestra burst into life in August 2018, and is an arts organisation with an explicit social remit at its heart: to bring the therapeutic and community-strengthening value of high-quality live orchestral music of all genres to everyone in our society.
A richly celebrated Scottish singer and songwriter, Siobhan Miller’s soulful and stirring renewal of traditional folk song has won multiple accolades, including the BBC Radio 2 Folk Award for Best Traditional Track, and the BBC Alba Scots Trad Music Awards’ Scots Singer of the Year an unprecedented four times. Her fourth solo release, All Is Not Forgotten, received widespread acclaim upon its early 2020 release, marrying traditional song and a return to Miller’s acoustic roots, with beautifully rendered, melodiously reflective original songs that deftly mingle indie and alternative sounds with a deep traditional upbringing.
Michael Pederson is a prize-winning Scottish writer. He has published two highly acclaimed collections of poetry (Polygon Books), and has a prose debut, Boy Friends, forthcoming with Faber & Faber. Pedersen was awarded the John Mather Trust Rising Star of Literature 2014, and a 2015 Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship. He’s also co-founded and co-captained literary collective Neu! Reekie! for the past ten years.
Robert Burns Birthplace Museum offers a truly unique encounter with Scotland’s favourite son. Robert Burns is Scotland’s National Bard, and his poetry and songs are known and loved the world over. But who was he and what made him tick? The best place to get close to Burns and his genius is his birthplace in the beautiful village of Alloway. Our flagship museum starts a journey that weaves through the village, taking you from historical buildings to landmarks known to Burns.
Tickets are on sale now at www.burnsbignightin.org.
The National Trust for Scotland is the conservation charity that over 90 years has saved, maintained and shared many of the country’s most loved places, rich with history, heritage, nature and culture. The charity celebrates Scotland’s heritage and with more than 100 places in its care, there’s a place for everyone to love.
Find our more at www.nts.org.uk.
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