Welcome to The Scotsman Sessions

With the performing arts world shutting down 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:

 RSNO principal flute Katherine Bryan playing Debussy’s Syrinx from her home in Balfron in Stirlingshire, accompanied by the songbirds outside her window

 Karine Polwart performing a scene from her acclaimed show Wind Resistance – a tribute to the NHS – from her back garden in Pathhead, Midlothian

 Idlewild frontman Roddy Woomble playing the track Floating On A River, taken from his 2017 solo album, The Deluder, in a friend’s byre on Iona

 Award-winning Shetland poet Roseanne Watt reading work from her new collection, Moder Dy, in both Shaetlan and English