GIVEN that its programme this year includes robotic sculptures that follow shoppers around Glasgow’s Buchanan Galleries, an amazing drone choir performing in a former swimming pool and a sound artist turning plants into collaborators creating ambient electronic music, the Sonica festival’s artistic director Cathie Boyd isn’t joking when she says those contributing “are not going to be on Top Of The Pops” any time soon.
Experimental is certainly an accurate description of the music they will create during the 11-day festival, which starts next Thursday, but it has huge appeal to the adventurous and the curious and will captivate the hearts and imaginations of those lucky enough to hear it.
“These are talented musicians who I think are doing something different with sound and deserve support,” says Boyd. When she started her production company Cryptic while studying at what is now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, she says she wanted to give Glasgow something inspirational that they would never forget. “Memorability is an important part of Cryptic. You may go to something and not like it, but, by God, you’ll remember it.”
And certainly this year’s Sonica, the ninth festival since she started it in 2012, is packed with pioneering performances involving more than 170 artists from 21 countries across 11 venues.
Originally from Ireland, Boyd moved to Glasgow in 1990 to study at what was then the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. “It was the best-facilitated drama school in Europe at that point”, she says. “I had started directing when I was 17, believe it or not, a bit precocious. I knew they had a really good studio and really good facilities, and they also had a TV studio, as well as theatre.
“I didn’t know which world I wanted to go into. I had dabbled a tiny bit in film before.”
Her arrival in the city coincided with its time as European Capital of Culture, and her first experiences in the city blew her mind.
“I saw all these amazing works from all over the world,” she says. “I came from Belfast and I only knew political theatre. I only knew Irish drama. I didn’t know all this was possible. I was so inspired by the work I saw and the fact that you could tell a story through multiple art forms. It wasn’t just text. It was visual. It was music, sculpture, dance. It was just extraordinary.
“There were lots of opportunities in Glasgow in the early 90s. What Bob Palmer [director of European City of Culture] was doing for Glasgow was extraordinary. So there was no reason for me to want to go anywhere else. I’ve been in Glasgow ever since. I’m incredibly loyal to the city for the opportunities and support it has given me.”
Boyd was increasingly interested in the power of music when it was combined with a visual element. Cryptic was initially known as Theatre Cryptic but was re-registered as Cryptic Glasgow.
“I didn’t want that connection [to just theatre] anymore,” says Boyd. “We were commissioning scores, we weren’t commissioning texts, and those scores would then be presented on stage.”
That passion for music is strongly reflected in Sonica, which since its formation has been very much a music festival with a strong, important visual element.
“The difference between a music concert and what you see at Sonica is that we always have a visual element. We will never put on a straight gig. Whether it’s real-time visuals, whether it’s lighting, whether it’s what you’re wearing, and design.
“There will always be a really dramatic visual element with what we present. Music is what’s driving everything in Sonica but I’m looking at how music is presented because my big passion is about how music is presented visually.”
Part of Boyd’s Sonica mission was to change the way a younger audience connected with classical music, moving it out of the confines of traditional venues to other spaces, such as the Tramway.
Boyd says: “I am really aware that the concert hall is not an inviting place for many young people. How do you change how classical music is presented and bring young people to the floor?
“The Royal Scottish National Orchestra (RSNO) are fantastic partners with us, and I wanted to bring them into the Tramway, remove all the seats and give the audience, and especially young people who’ve never seen orchestral music, a different experience.
“We also have massive screens with real-time visuals to give them this, I hope, ravishing, beautiful experience because music is so evocative. We’re not only putting up video. It’s shapes and colours and textures, if that makes sense.’’ The RSNO played the Tramway during Sonica 2024, at the Scottish premiere of John Luther Adams’ Become Ocean and will be returning to the venue at this year’s festival on Thursday, October 1 to perform Philip Glass’s The Bowie Symphony No 4.
Apart from inspiring audiences, Sonica exists to showcase Scottish talent, and particularly new, emerging talent. Even before launching the festival, Boyd was promoting new talent in various ways with Cryptic, including a regular series of Cryptic Nights, which launched in 2009.
One of the artists who took part in that series was Rachel Maclean, whose stunning and thought-provoking AI-driven commission, They’ve Got Your Eyes, is one of four artworks to take over spaces at the Buchanan Galleries shopping centre during this year’s Sonica.
“I didn’t want to be one of those artistic directors that just stays in the chair”, says Boyd. “It’s very easy to set up a company, and you’re the artistic director. You’re calling the shots. You choose the productions. You tour them. I didn’t really want to keep doing that.
“I felt I’d had an amazing career. I’ve toured 20 countries. I’ve presented work at the Barbican, at the Southbank Centre. I’ve done works in Bogota and Singapore. I need to make way for the next generation. Cryptic Nights was about doing that, and then we created Cryptic Artists, which is a group of artists who we invite to join a roster, where we commission and promote them over four to five years. And there’s Sonica.”
Another thread of the festival is about bringing into use buildings which show Glasgow’s amazing architecture. This year, for example, Pollok House will be the festival’s Listening House after being closed since November 2023 for major restoration.
The house, built in 1752, will be home to a range of artworks, including Mundus Inversus, a huge video installation on global inequality and social collapse, Colour Sound, an immersive installation creating a shifting landscape of reactive colour sound and light, and Plants Can Dance in which plants become co-composers. The festival’s press release describes the Pollok House events as a “festival within a festival”.
Boyd says: “This year we’ll also be going to Rutherglen Parish Church as it is Rutherglen 900 [to celebrate the 900th anniversary of Rutherglen becoming a Royal Burgh] and we used the Tolbooth Steeple in 2024.
“I hope it’s something that we will do in future years because Glasgow has so many amazing buildings to show.”
With so many artists involved in the festival, Boyd spends huge amounts of time checking out their work all over the world.
She says: “I’m away a lot of the year travelling and going to festivals. I like to see all the work live before we programme it, unless I know the company very well or I’ve seen them perform something else. So that’s really important for me in meeting the artists.
“But you know I’m curious, so I’ll happily get on a plane and go to a small festival in the Swiss mountains if it means I’m going to discover an artist. It’s not just going to the Muteks, the Rewires, those big festivals. Sometimes it’s more interesting to go to the smaller places and to look out the talent of the next generation. Because I guess I’m interested in supporting artists. Not that all Sonica artists need it, but it’s that next stage in their career, that next step.
“One of the things I’ve been doing the past few years, and that I’m deeply passionate about, is going to countries that are less well known and presenting their cultures.
“So I went to Myanmar and I met 25 artists in Yangon in a week, and the last Sonica, one person [Heft] performed. This year, Moe Myat will come from Yangon and present her work and be here for two weeks. And that’s life-changing for those artists. It’s really, really important. There’s war in Myanmar; it is really, really difficult, and they’re all self-taught artists there. There’s nowhere for them to go to really learn audiovisual art. So when they come to Sonica we always put them in a flat with another artist.
“They meet that artist, they develop a relationship, they meet another artist. So it’s an incredible learning opportunity for those artists, but also they’re getting to show their work to thousands of people, which they would never get to do if they were at home.
“Lots of artists write to me years later saying that moment was transformative, and you know it means a lot to them. Whereas the more successful just want to come in, perform, and leave and that’s not something we really encourage.
“We want people to come to Glasgow, stay a minimum of three nights. Some will come for two weeks if we can find the funding, but that’s quite hard to do. But we raise money for all the international artists coming in. That’s really important.
“All the [sponsorship] logos you see in the brochure … I work very closely with those embassies. I am hugely grateful to them for enabling those artists to come here because without their support we couldn’t present work from Georgia, for example. Next week we will have our fourth Georgian artist here in residence.”
Boyd continues: “I’m proud of the whole festival. I couldn’t do any of this without my fantastic team. They’re extraordinary and I’m very grateful for their very hard work.
“The festival requires an enormous amount of work. I’m already starting the 28 [festival], in my head. We close the international part of the programme a year in advance of the festival because it takes us so long to raise the money, and the artists can only come if funding is pending.
“That’s a laborious process, but we have to do it. I’m not going to say how many hours a day I work, but you work a lot of hours, and my team are really dedicated, and yes, I’m demanding. I’m probably not the easiest lady to work, and I want it all immediately. But you know, I have an office of strong ladies and that’s important. But I love it. I love the adventure. That’s probably why I go somewhere. I’m curious. I want to know.”
She adds: “I once was directing an opera, and it was set in Haiti in an orphanage, and I went all the way to Port-au-Prince on my own to research this opera, and I had no travel insurance because you couldn’t get any. There was no British embassy. I could only tell the French embassy where I was. I did all the things that people said not to do.
“But I don’t have children, I don’t have animals, and I don’t have plants. I have nothing that relies on me at any level, so after Sonica I’m immediately on the road again.”
