Lammermuir Festival - Earth, thy cold is keen
Thu 04 Sept
|St Mary's Church
Old and new meet in an intimate and evocative performance that brings together song, medieval lyric, Scottish folk, and contemporary instrumental sounds. Sequoia: Alice Rickards violin & Sonia Cromarty cello Lotte Betts-Dean: mezzo soprano Stuart MacRae: harmonium
Time & Location
04 Sept 2025, 15:00 – 16:10
St Mary's Church, Whitekirk, Dunbar EH42 1XS, UK
About the event
More information and Tickets
Whitekirk’s beautiful mediaeval church is back in action for Lammermuir Festival! Its superb acoustic makes it the perfect venue for what BBC Music Magazine called the ‘stunning, melancholic beauty’ of Scottish composer Stuart MacRae’s atmospheric, folk-influenced song cycle. Acclaimed Australian mezzo Lotte Betts-Dean, winner of the Royal Philharmonic Society young artist of the year in 2024, is the ideal soloist in these songs written for her.
“…conjures an aural landscape steeped in folk music and medieval lyric, but the result is entirely distinctive and modern... This is music for slow, close listening, beautifully performed.”
Fiona Maddocks, The Observer
“There’s gripping unpredictability in a journey that courses through the mystical, largely unaccompanied simplicity of The Captive, a traditional Gaelic song playfully remodelled, and much more en route to the crushing density of O Earth, Lie Heavily and the earlier-composed The Lif of this World.”
★★★★★ - Ken…