Tuesday September 29th 2026
Bubblyjock at the Eastgate
Written by Midlothian view reader, Helen Grant Cumming
Music lovers were treated to two contrasting experiences from Music in Peebles last week, with an evening exploring how Border ballads have inspired Scottish classical composers from The Bubblyjock Collective at the Eastgate Theatre, and a Madrigal History Tour from the Melrose Vocal Ensemble at St Peter’s Church.
Bubblyjock (soprano Rosie Lavery, pianist Anna Michels and accordionist and singer Neil Sutcliffe), all graduates of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, champion the works of neglected Scottish composers, some from the 19 th century up to the present day, focussing especially on art-song with Scots and Gaelic texts. Their programme included words from Hugh MacDiarmid to the music of Hawick-born Francis George Scott, ballads by another local composer Ronald Stevenson, and a song cycle to texts by Stevenson’s daughter Gerda.
While the evening brought a new and perhaps to some an unanticipated angle to Border ballads, the consensus was admiration for the quality of musicianship, a real tour de force.
Two days later the pace was altogether gentler with a “merry skip” through the history of the madrigal, unaccompanied part songs principally from the 16 th and 17 th centuries written to secular themes such as nature, death or romantic love, sometimes unrequited and sometimes a little promiscuous. Very much in contrast to the florid and intricate style of pre-Reformation church music.
Pastime with Good Company, written by the 18-year-old King Henry VIII is typical, extolling the virtues of love, hunting and good company, and Orlando Gibbons’ The Silver Swan, a farewell from a swan silent in life and with one “swan song” in death.
Or “The shepherd’s daughters playing, the nymphs are fa-la laing” in John Bennet’s All Creatures Now are Merry Minded from The Triumphs of Oriana in honour of Queen Elizabeth I.
And for more modern examples? Bach-influenced A Whiter Shade of Pale, the 1960s mega-hit by Procul Harum and equally epoch-making I Get Around by the Beach Boys. A merry skip indeed.
Details of future Music in Peebles concerts are at musicinpeebles.org.uk.
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