The Handover + Ailbhe Nic Oireachtaigh + Weston Olencki & Laura Cocks

For several of our past opening events at Counterflows we’ve kicked things off with “folk night,” and this year we’re pleased to revive the tradition at a new venue for us, the beautiful Woodside Halls.

We’ve all heard the term “all music is folk music”, but what about music that specifically delves into past traditions and reinvents them, lets them meet new ideas and twists them into something else?

We open the festival with Weston Olencki and Laura Cocks, presenting work that reconfigures their flute’s scales and acoustic systems, and adapts Scottish bagpipe music from the Kilberry Book of Ceol Meadhonach (1908). Irish-born, Glasgow based artist Ailbhe Nic Oireachtaigh will also perform, presenting her striking approach to the viola, drawn from improvised, experimental and early music styles. Finishing the evening we’ll present Egypt’s The Handover,  who combine the delicacy of classical Arabic music with the raw expressiveness of Egypt’s rural and shaabi music, peppered with a good dose of psychedelic improvisation and experimentation.

This event is open to people of all ages