Still Voices has been performed in Aberdeen, Banchory, Banff, Bangor, Belfast, Birmingham, Bourges, Brussels, Dundalk, Edinburgh, Ellon, Forgue, Gainesville, Glenrothes, Inverurie, Leeds, Leicester, London, Manchester, Maynooth, Montréal, Nagoya, New York City, Pasadena, Romeoville, San Diego, Scarborough, Sheffield, South River, Statesboro, Stockholm, Tarland, Valdivia and Vancouver…

Still Voices, like Resound and Fields of Silence, is part of a larger project called Gordon Soundscape, which is a project mapping the sonic diversity of the former Gordon District in Aberdeenshire (Scotland, UK). The project comprises acousmatic / soundscape concert pieces Still Voices and Fields of Silence, an interactive website and a sound documentary / installation (Resound).

I am intrigued by the potential power that I have as a composer working with technology and fixed media to conserve sounds which will soon no longer exist. Workers at the Glendronach Distillery in North-East Scotland were told in 2004 that the plant was to move from a coal-fired manufacturing process to a more ecological method of heating. They began to realise that the sounds they had become used to as part of their daily work — kiln doors opening and closing, raking out the kilns, coal pouring from the back of delivery lorries — were soon to disappear from their working environment.

Originally, I had intended to make a few recordings of these “disappearing sounds” and use them in the sound documentary / installation part of the project. However, it became clear to me, during the visits I made to the distillery, that there were many more interesting sounds which were crying out to be used and so I decided to make an entire piece using sounds recorded from both inside and outside of the distillery, including the rolling of whisky barrels along the ground, grain milling machines and the Glendronach Burn which runs through the distillery grounds.

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Still Voices was realized in 2005 and premiered on November 8, 2005 during the concert Discoveries XXXIV in one of the auction rings at the Thainstone Centre (Inverurie, Scotland, UK). The piece was commissioned by Gordon Forum for the Arts, with support from Aberdeenshire Council and the Scottish Arts Council.