Graeme Stephen

A project brought together by Guest Curator Aidan O’Rourke, celebrating the grit, calibre and charisma of Edinburgh’s grassroots music-making, featuring Brighde Chaimbeul, Bashir Saade, Graeme Stephen and Rachel Sermanni

In 2020, five musicians gathered in a deserted concert hall. The group involved Skye piper Brìghde Chaimbeul, Lebanese ney player Bashir Saade, jazz guitarist Graeme Stephen, soulful singer-songwriter Rachel Sermanni and Aidan on fiddle. Aidan’s idea was to explore the wider areas around each other’s musical worlds. This was lockdown and everyone was crying out to collaborate after months of musical solitude.

It was a fleeting encounter – just a 15-minute film, made with social-distancing – but what occurred that day was magnetic: a rare synergy between players as they sat in a wide circle, eyes closed, passing the music between them with an urgent sense of how music can bring connection on the deepest levels.

Three years later, Aidan is bringing the group back together and the new sounds centre around Bashir’s Arabic music and the beautiful scales and microtones which Aidan has been exploring with Bashir since then.

Graeme Stephen

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