Welcome to The Scotsman Sessions

With performing arts activity curtailed for the foreseeable future, we are commissioning a series of short video performances from artists all around the country and releasing them on scotsman. com, with introductions by our critics.

Highlights so far include:

KT Tunstall performing her new song, Anything At All, from her home in Topanga Canyon, Los Angeles

Scotland’s Makar Jackie Kay reading two lockdown poems, Still and Mask

Tam Dean Burn tackling the subject of Scotland’s salmon farming industry in an excerpt from his show Aquaculture Flagshipwreck

Scottish Chamber Orchestra cellist Su-a Lee playing Dvořák’s Songs My Mother Taught Me in a forest near Grantown-on-spey

To watch, visit www.scotsman.com/arts-and-culture

down by exposition. Caro does not need to spell out that “Sally was a counterweight, the other half of me that Pauly needed” – the subtler passages convey that just fine.

Character-wise, the dynamics between the protagonists are interesting, but their voices are almost indistinguishable.

Despite its flaws, The High House is frequently penetrating and moving on grief, childcare, the lies we tell ourselves and group dynamics. Greengrass’s account of global disaster hinges on the minor joys and annoyances of everyday life. Francesca might brand these lethal distractions in the face of impending doom, but Greengrass suggests they are a form of self-protection.

As Caro says: “There is a kind of organic mercy, grown deep inside us, which makes it so much easier to care about small, close things, else how could we live?