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Katherine McGillivray
An appreciation by David McGuinness

The Scotsman, 14 September 2006

The first time I met Katherine, it was clear that she was more than just an exceptionally talented musician. It was Concerto Caledonia's first BBC studio recording session, in June 1993, and Katherine was just about to graduate from the RSAMD, taking the Peter Morrison Prize for 'outstanding contribution to the life of the Academy'. We were playing a partita by Biber for violin and viola, where the strings are tuned not to their usual notes, but to B flat, E flat and A flat. There was never any doubt that she had a complete mastery of the mind-bending technique required to play this, but what struck me at the time was that she was also acutely aware of the interpersonal dynamics in the room: she knew that there was more than just music going on.

This grounded awareness of a wider social and cultural picture informed all of her playing and teaching, sometimes in surprising and very entertaining ways.  However much she loved playing the baroque viola (and she did), 18^th century viola parts were never going to set the limits of her expertise.  So she mastered the 14-stringed viola d’amore, recording a duet with cellist Yo-Yo Ma; she got to grips with tunes on Charlie McKerron’s fiddle course on Skye; and eventually she took herself to a remote part of Sweden for a year to learn to play the nyckelharpa (Swedish keyed fiddle) at the Eric Sahlström Institute, and to look for inspiration for her teaching in folk traditions.  She was delighted to discover that at the ESI, dancing is a daily part of the learning experience.

Wherever she played, Katherine was a binding and uniting force, with a skill and, indeed, enthusiasm for ‘clearing up the wreckage’, as she put it, caused by clashing musical egos - mine included.  Her willingness to share good whisky was well known, but she could also prove handy with a camping gas stove, serving up her dad’s soup at the sessions for our Spring Any Day Now album.  It was no accident that practically every substantial baroque music group in the UK, and a few elsewhere, wanted to have her around.

Her musical versatility was remarkable: she moved from playing fiendishly complex 16^th century counterpoint by Thomas Morley, to re-creating a dreamy Jon Hassell trumpet solo, to evoking the spirit of the Buzzcocks’ Spiral Scratch EP, all in one recording session, giving each an appropriate character that wasn’t forced.  When playing the viola in fiddle tunes, she invented her own musical language from scratch, moving freely between playing the tune, harmony parts, rhythm, and textural colour.  And her versatility with friends was as accomplished, in that she took care to find out what really interested people. She had a formidable skill for buying presents that really hit the spot, and I certainly treasure my Daniel Johnston ‘Hi How Are You’ T-shirt which she gave me on the way to a Bach rehearsal earlier this year.

Since her time in Sweden, a new confidence was emerging in a number of ways.  She was no longer reticent about presenting her tunes for us to play: she’d been writing them for years and giving them away as presents, but now she really knew that they were good.  She became more relaxed on stage, telling better stories and getting more laughs from the audience than the rest of us.  She had a new forthrightness in rehearsal. One of my favourite moments from this year’s Bach St John Passion project which Mark Padmore directed (without a conductor) in Perth Concert Hall, was when the upper strings were just about to settle on an effective but rather weedy interpretation of one passage, and Katherine’s voice rang out: ‘I have a problem with that actually’.  The matter was settled quickly in her favour, and the music came alive.  Finally, she began to display talents previously hidden: when we fulfilled one of her ambitions by playing on a live edition of Radio 3’s Late Junction, I turned round at one point to find her chatting to guitarist Ian Carr in fluent Swedish.

It seems particularly cruel that Katherine was taken from us just as her creativity was blossoming in new ways, and as we were all waiting with excitement to see and hear what she would come up with next.  But the richness and integrity of what she has already given us remains an inspiration.

Katherine McGillivray, musician; born Paisley May 21, 1970, died Sheffield August 1, 2006

visit Katherine's online book of remembrance

contribute to her memorial grove in the Caledonian Forest