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A spellbinding performance that interprets Aud the Deep Minded's life with depth and musical intensity. A powerful blend of music, storytelling and light.
Aud The Deep Minded is an original chamber opera composed by Joanna Nicholson who also plays the clarinet in the quartet also composed of horn, soprano and electronic music. Telling the story of Aud, a 9th century Viking leader, across towns, forests and seas, we are taken on a journey across a soundscape that is unashamedly loud and yet dreamily serene. I’d love to see this on a bigger stage next year.
In this Made In Scotland Showcase, an early medieval tale was retold as a short opera
through modern, magical storytelling using electronics, sound, projection art and
music. Composer Joanna Nicholson – who spoke heroine Aud’s speeches and played
the clarinet – put us straight about deceased Viking King Olaf The White – “He was an
arsehole!” – and so the scene was set to dramatise how his strong widow Aud would
deal with the aftermath of his murder. The representations of woodland using projection
art (the performers wore white), French Horn and electronic sounds were particularly
effective. Distinguished Soprano, Clíona Cassidy, sang in ancient, well-researched
tongues – including references from medieval Benedictine plainchant authority Notker
The Stammerer – in a score alive with symbolism and timeless musicality.
From the very first note, Aud The Deep-Minded envelopes you in a world where history, myth, and the present collide. This groundbreaking musical drama, created by Scottish New Music Award-shortlisted composer Joanna Nicholson, is inspired by fragments of unreliable historical accounts and reimagines the story of Aud the Deep-Minded—a real-life Christian Viking and conflicted leader in 9th-century Scotland.
Combining projections, voice, electronic soundscapes, clarinet, and horn, Nicholson crafts a psychological journey through Odd’s transformation: oppressed to oppressor, and ultimately, liberator. The staging is as striking as the music—performers clad in white against a black backdrop become living canvases for Kirsty Anderson’s atmospheric projection art, merging seamlessly with the story’s shifting landscapes. Soprano Cleona Cassidy’s voice soars over Andy Saunders’ horn, Nicholson’s own clarinet, and Alistair MacDonald’s intricate electronic textures. The sound balance is impeccable, enveloping the audience in an immersive, otherworldly soundscape that blurs the lines between past and present. Spoken-word passages interlace with song, grounding the piece in narrative while keeping its mystique intact.
It is rare to see contemporary music-theatre executed with such vision and precision. This is not just one of the best shows at the Fringe this year—it’s one of the most original and affecting pieces of music-theatre in recent memory.
A must-see for anyone craving innovative, atmospheric, and emotionally resonant performance.
Clarinettist and composer, Joanna Nicholson, brought her debut creation, Aud the Deep Minded, to theSPACE Triplex this Fringe. Billed as a “groundbreaking new chamber opera”, I would say it more than lives up to that description.
So what or who is Aud? Well, Aud the Deep Minded was a 9th-century Viking leader, Icelandic settler, and mother of great battlechiefs. That’s right, mother, Aud was also a woman. Nicholson’s Opera tries to look behind the legend to find the human being beneath.
It’s an intensely modern experience, which pushed operatic boundaries even whilst preserving conventions such as aria and recitative. The all-encompassing blend of 9th- century church music, Norwegian folk, and electronica, along with Kirsty Anderson’s dream-like projection,s invites an audience into a unique space.
In the end, Nicholson’s most magnificent achievement was in creating a vivid sense of a complicated, living, breathing person and the ancient landscape surrounding them. This is art going where neither the humanities nor science can begin to tread.
Joanna Nicholson’s haunting story blends fact and fiction to reimagine the story of the real-life Viking Queen, Aud the Deep Minded, as a figure persisting through time and space, simultaneously escaping persecution at the hands of the vikings and speaking to us in the present day.
The small scale approach gives each performer space to flourish in their own right: space that was certainly deserved. Nicholson on the clarinet and Andy Saunders on the french horn both produce an incredible tone, and their overlapping accompaniment to soprano Cliona Cassidy is haunting and beautiful. Cassidy’s voice is clear and perfectly suited for the wild, bracing atmosphere of the Viking wilderness. The most beautiful moments of the piece are the stretches of voice accompanied by clarinet and horn, creating a soundscape that encapsulates the power and enourmity of Aud’s life and will. I particularly enjoyed the ending as Cassidy sang “I liberate you, I liberate myself”, and the electronic manipulation that Alistair MacDonald, the fourth member of cast, did onstage.
MacDonald adds effects like echoes and distortion to all the instruments, as well as bringing in other music, all recorded by those onstage, to add a beautiful complexity to the sound. His work transforms the piece into something ethereal, bringing it into, through and then past reality.
Aud the Deep Minded is a beautiful, haunting watch by a very talented composer, and a bracing gust of Icelandic fresh air for those looking for something less comedic at the Fringe.
Joanna Nicholson’s 40-minute chamber opera, Aud the Deep Minded compresses centuries of historiography, and folklore into a taut psychological drama that lingers long after the final note. It is small and simple, but incredibly effective storytelling, combining a soprano voice, French horn, clarinet, and electronic sound, to tell Nicholson’s re-imagining of Aud the Deep Minded, a 9th century Viking Christian Queen, as an internally conflicted leader.
The opera’s multilingual score is key to its spell. Aud speaks to us in English, prays to God in solemn Latin, slips into a fantasy Gaelic when possessed by her ancient self, and spits her rage in Norwegian. The shifts are seamless yet transformative: each language a doorway into another facet of her fractured, time-spanning identity. Even when the meaning is obscured, the emotional truth is unmistakable, the sound of the words becomes part of the music’s texture, carrying centuries of belief, grief, and power in its vowels.
Aud the Deep Minded is not just beautiful, it is phenomenal. It is bewitching, a tale that transcends temporal limits through its use of music and language.
I loved this new music theatre work - really atmospheric storytelling, simply but effectively staged, and sections highlighting each of the superb musicians' skills in a way that drew me deeper into the emotions of the story! The music runs the gamut from adventurous to beautiful and from haunting to overwhelming. A unique experience.
Beautiful performance of a stunningly original piece. Attentive and precise musicianship; imaginative story-telling; sensitive blending of words, sounds and images.
The journey of Aud from the death of her terrible husband, the Viking king of Dublin, to independence and freedom in Iceland via a wild wood in Caithness, is wonderfully told through music and projections. The otherworldly voice of Cliona Cassidy, the altogether more worldly spoken narrative and expressive clarinet of Joanna Nicholson, combined with Andy Saunders' extraordinary horn playing and the beautiful projections and soundscapes of Kirsty Anderson and Alistair MacDonald, make this an intense and haunting experience. New music in an innovative staging, Joanna Nicholson's music drama deserves a wide audience.
Performances of real quality, mesmerising visuals and sound effects, and all telling quite a story, beautifully written.
Amazing - quite the most innovative and unforgettable performance I've seen yet this year on the Fringe. The combination of the music and the visual / sound effects is mesmerising and haunting. Thoroughly recommended!
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