01 Silk Threads

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Clîona Cassidy and Raymond MacDonald

Silk Threads

Music and text by Clîona Cassidy and Raymond MacDonald

Voice - Clîona Cassidy
Saxophone and piano - Rayomond MacDonald

Recording engineeer - Louis mcHugh and Roderick Buchannan-Dunlop
Mixed and mastered - Louis McHugh
Produced by Clîona Cassidy, Raymond MacDonald and Louis McHugh

Recorded at the Reid Concert Hall, Edinburgh

Photography by Kris Kesiak

Silk Threads is a new improvised opera by Cliona Cassidy and Raymond MacDonald. Based on the Irish/Scottish folk song The Lass of Aughrim, the opera explores how stories begin and the importance they play in human identity and developing our own sense of self. As the folk song shape shifts across borders and memory, the narrative is slowly transformed through the characters who tell it. It depicts a woman, stuck in an episodic dream that repeats in cyclical patterns. It deals with inherited trauma, patterns of behaviour and the search for connection and authenticity. Clíona and Raymond use undulating loops, repeated rhythms and transforming melody fragments to create an intimate world with the fragility and ferocity of what it means to be human.

Short bios

Clíona Cassidy is a soprano, composer and experimental vocalist from Dublin. She has worked for Scottish Opera since 2012, as a soloist and as a chorister, and is a member of the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra. Her compositional practice is focused around operatic improvisation and she is passionate about exploring the boundaries of her instrument and where the seemingly disparate practices of free improvisation and operatic vocal technique can merge, reimagining classical structures through an experimantal lens. With this focus, she wrote and performed an improvised song cycle “Hiatus” and performed it with the New String Collective at the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra’s Tectonics Festival 2025. She is a frequent guest lecturer at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, teaching improvisation and choral singing.

Raymond MacDonald is a saxophonist and composer with an extensive career in music, cross-disciplinary arts and academia. Much of his work explores the boundaries and ambiguities between what is conventionally seen as improvisation and composition. As a saxophonist and composer, MacDonald has released over 60 CDs, toured and broadcast worldwide and has composed music for film, television, theatre, radio and art installations. MacDonald’s work is informed by a view of improvisation as a social, collaborative and uniquely creative process that provides opportunities to develop new ways of engaging musically. He plays in many collaborative free improvisatory contexts, and his roots in jazz and pop music can be heard across all areas of his performance and composition. His unique approach of combining music and psychology and incorporating other artistic disciplines has been used to develop collaborative projects and ongoing working relationships around the world.

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Jan 01 ’46