Lee goes wild
“At about nine o’clock I crept up with my cello to a ditch and placed my chair half in and half out of it, quite crooked, but I knew that the exquisite voice was there, under a thicket of oak leaves, ready to sing to his little wife.”
Beatrice Harrison, the celebrated British cellist and friend of Elgar, later also recalled how the nightingale eventually burst into song on that balmy May evening of 1924, duetting with her “like a loosely improvised cadenza over a bass ground”.
The moment, captured in Harrison’s Surrey woodland garden by the BBC, its first ever outside broadcast, enchanted a worldwide audience.
South Korean-born cellist Su-a Lee, the charismatic Scottish Chamber Orchestra front-desker – though equally adept on musical saw with the quirkier Mr Mcfall’s Chamber and erstwhile collaborator with such rock giants as Eric Clapton – has also been living and hear him play in this touching performance. “It’s great for me because it’s the simplest instrument to play,” he says. “I had five years of guitar lessons and still was terrible. With the kazoo, the day I bought it I was like a virtuoso.”
The number he’s chosen to perform for The Scotsman Sessions is That Lonely Feeling, which was originally recorded by Scottish sister act The Mckinleys in 1964 and shortly afterwards by a nascent version of Glasgow hitmakers Marmalade. Stewart, who recorded the backing track with fellow Bandit Stuart Kidd, asked the song’s cowriter John Carter for permission to add a new final verse.
So why did he choose this song?
“I thought the feeling of loneliness, along with me singing it into my webcam, quite close up like I am conveying something quite intimate, would feel appropriate for these times,” he explains. “It isn’t a widely known song and it deserves to be heard by more people.”
Meanwhile, Stewart continues to host his lockdown quiz every Tuesday on Facebook. “People have told me that they find it a welcome escape and distraction from all the dark stuff that’s been going on in the world,” he said.
“I hope for people playing along, even if they get a low score, they will have found it entertaining. And I think it’s as much about me welcoming people into my world as it is about quizzing.”
PAUL WHITELAW
● See www.facebook.com/duglas.stewart and www.bmxbandits.net