Selected Quotes

Reviews & Features

Scots study reveals making music together during lockdown good for the soul and lifts spirits

“Making music together during lockdown tunes up your wellbeing, a new study has revealed. Due to the global pandemic, musicians have been unable to perform together in person and have instead collaborated over the internet.

Take That star Gary Barlow has dueted with a series of stars — including Rod Stewart — for millions of fans through his online Crooner Session videos while Scots singer Amy Macdonald even launched her new album with a live stream event.

Professor Raymond MacDonald, Chair of Music Psychology and Improvisation at the Edinburgh College of Art, is a member of the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra.

Although it wasn’t intended, their virtual performances turned into the world’s first study investigating the effects of global online music making during a pandemic.

He says: “The study came about partly because when lockdown happened, there was no opportunity for musicians to get together and play. It began with a desire to keep connected. We wanted to be able to play together so we thought we’d experiment.“

- Colan Lamont The Scottish Sun

Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2019 : Lie Still My Sleepy Fortunes

***** “In Lie Still My Sleepy Fortunes MacDonald and his line-up of world class performers give us an experience like no other, a spectacular combination of sound and visuals that challenges, inspires, and leaves us wanting more.”

- Rosemary Kaye, The Edinburgh Reporter

Return to Y'Hup: The World of Ivor Cutler (Chemikal Underground) Citizen Bravo, Raymond MacDonald and Friends

**** “Folk singer Karine Polwart, Mogwai guitarist Stuart Braithwaite and BMX Bandits bandleader Duglas T Stewart are among the guests who successfully tackle brief comic monologues, while Belle and Sebastian’s Stuart Murdoch nails the punchline of Gruts for Tea, one of Cutler’s most beloved bits. The core band of Brennan, MacDonald, guitarist Malcolm Benzie and keyboardist/flautist Sarah Hayes create some wondrous chamber-pop backing, but live it is the darker-hued songs that really crackle: Heather Leigh’s swooping take on The Boo Boo Bird is Lynchian and unsettling, while Chris Thomson of cult band the Bathers finds a supremely anxious timbre for Who Tore Your Trousers?

Before a suitably strange audience singalong in morse code conducted by Polwart, the entire ensemble – led by MacDonald and Emma Pollock – combine for Cutler’s 1983 single Women of the World. It is a strident song about overturning the patriarchy to subvert a global apocalypse that suggests this perennial oddball was far ahead of his time.”

- Graeme Virtue, The Guardian

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“Citizen Bravo’s Matt Brennan, Raymond MacDonald of Glasgow Improvisers’ Orchestra, guitarist Malcolm Benzie and Frightened Rabbit’s Andy Monaghan – had no difficulty in attracting a host of mostly Scottish musicians to the project, from practised storytellers such as Kris Drever to idiosyncratic stylists such as Belle & Sebastian’s Stuart Murdoch.


The singular spirit of Cutler is evoked throughout Return to Y’Hup, not least in the use of Cutler’s own harmonium and the love and respect accorded to his writing across the board.”

- Fiona Shepherd, Ken Walton And Jim Gilchrist, The Scotsman

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“The cast was a reminder of the breadth of talent and tradition of collaboration on the Scottish music scene, from indie, folk, rock and experimental bents they came, and the whole thing sounded great, and brought warm feelings to the assembled masses…As a tribute to Cutler’s truly original take on the world it was warm, appreciative and maybe even won him some new fans, which BM thinks he’d have liked.”

- Is This Music?

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“Some of Scotland’s finest musicians step up to interpret the work of the late, great Ivor Cutler, and his witty ditties retain an all-ages appeal.”

- Fiona Shepherd, The Hobbledehoy

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“This twenty four track charity double album, which features a host of Scots indie and folk bands, including Raymond Macdonald, Stuart Braithwaite, Lau, Karine Polwart, Emma Pollock and Jo Mango (as well as special guests, Cutler’s ex-partner and poet Phyllis King, and friend Robert Wyatt) is a touching, sweet tribute to the man.”

- Lorna Irvine, The Wee Review

Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra: GIO Sevens

“GIO Sevens was recorded in 2013 at Dunollie Castle, when the mighty Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra was invited to perform in Oban. This small grouping were able to get to Oban early enough to make this record and, for my money, it is as good as anything to come out of the GIO stable.

GIO Sevens reminds me of those qualities that I find irresistible in key improvising ensembles such as the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, the Art Ensemble Of Chicago, the Jimmy Giuffre 3 (with Paul Bley and Steve Swallow), Sun Ra and his Arkestra and the Ganelin Trio. Not that the music here sounds like any of these. Rather it has a similar timeless feel to it that exists on its own terms and in its own space.”

- Duncan Heining, All About Jazz

Parallel Moments (Babel Label) Raymond MacDonald and Marilyn Crispell

“From the very first notes of “Longing”, the opening track of Parallel Moments, a new album by the saxophonist Raymond MacDonald and the pianist Marilyn Crispell, there’s an awareness that that you’re in the presence of something special. MacDonald’s sound carries such poise and pathos, Crispell’s chords are so sensitively voiced and weighted. The arc of the piece, as they increase the intensity before releasing the tension, is simply perfect. I don’t think I’ve been so moved by the interplay between an alto saxophone and a pianist since Carlos Ward and Carla Bley duetted (with the help of a string quartet) on “Desireless”, from Don Cherry’s Relativity Suite, back in 1973. “Longing” is here, if you want to try it.

- Richard Williams, The Blue Moment

“Buddy” (Textile TCD24) Raymond MacDonald International Big Band

**** "Between composition and improvisation lies not so much a wall as a swamp, were the unwary drown and through which imaginative folk find diverse paths This is home turf for adventurous Scottish saxophonist Raymond MacDonald, who leads 12 musicians who have never played together into the morass and emerges with some exhilarating music. it eliminates the boundaries not just between composition and improvisation but between cultures and idioms.

Recorded live in Tokyo, his band includes Australians Alister Spence (piano), Lloyd Swanton (bass) and Toby Hall (drums) and ex-Sonic Youth guitarist Jim O'Rourke. MacDonald joins Spence's Trio at the Sound Lounge, February 5.” - John Shand, Metro

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"It's become a cliche these days for jazz musicians to say that their music explores the tension between improvisation and composition, even when that means little more than a superficial tweek of the traditional head-solo-head structure. But here's a project that actually means it.

As a founding member of The Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra, Scottish saxophonist Raymond MacDopnald has devoted much of his energies over the last eight years to negotiating approaches to improvisation - such as conduction, unconventional notation and structured responses to visula stimulii - in an attempt to prove that it is possible to improvise effectively in a large group context.

For this session, recorded in Tokyo in 2008, he convened a 12-piece ensemble that included pianist Atoko Fujii, The Necks' bassist Lloyd Swanton and Jim O'Rourke on guitar. This heavyweight international group sounds a lot like the Ttransatlantic version of Spring Heel Jack featured on 2003's Live, with O'Rourke's scabrous electric guitar occupying similar space to John Coxon's work. But, whereasSpring Heel Jack was ostensibly playing free, here MacDonald employs various 'devised' techniques that direct the pieces - and reveal important influences.

 "Conduction Instruction" clearly owes much to Buch Morris's system of hand signals (itself a refinement of Sun Ra's guided big band improvisations), building an erratic, unpredictable series of quick changes. Morris's presence can also be felt in the unusual instumental grouping: for instance bringing a kotoand a tuba together with Maki Hachiya's effervescent vocalisations in an unlikely but easy democracy.

"Why I Missed Cole Porter" is a slinky jazz ballad, notated with the command to "play what is written or play whatever you want". And "Hearing , Not Talking: Tokyo" is a text piece in which the musicians follow written instructions such as "copy the quietest instrument for two minutes".

What's impressive is the way these experiments avoid sounding overly academic. MacDonald marshals the large ensemble through swelling tides of emotional intensity, at times approaching the explosive turbulence of Peter Brotzmann's Chicago Tentet and the epic scale of George Russell's Electronoc Sonata for Souls Loved by Nature. In terms of MacDonald's original brief, it's an unqualified success.” - Daniel Spicer, WIRE

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"Raymond MacDonald has been making interesting and intriguing records for some time, most of them in concert with guitarist George Burt. This album finds him in richly deserved company of heavyweights such as Jim O'Rourke and Satoko Fujii. From the brooding and angry 'Small Groups (Part 1) with some astonishing playing from Fujii and MacDonald, to the circus antics of 'The Big Toe' and the atmospheric 'Why I missed Cole Porter', with its unusually delicate guitar from O'Rourke. MacDonald has created an album of considerable emotional range.

Whether written, conducted or freely improvised as on 'View from The 17th Floor', these eight piecesstretch from the eerily beautiful to the darkly humorous in a way that remains focused and concise.

The playing, in the ensembles in particular, is wonderfully poised and lends the album a sense of completeness and integrity. Music this articulate is rare in any style and, for me, that makes it one of the very best records I've heard so far this year.” - Duncan Heining, Jazzwise

“Stepping Between the Shadows” (Rufus/Universal RF095) Alister Spence, Raymond MacDonald

"Alister Spence is one of the leading lights on the Australian Jazz Scene whose curriculum vitae includes work with the brilliant and oftyen inspired Clarion Fracture Zone with Sandy Evans and Tony Gorman and the Australian Art Orchestra with Paul Grabowsky. With his own Alister Spence Trio he has made some fine albums such as Flux, Fit and Mercury and has been a frequent visitor to these shores where recognition has been in direct disproportion to his often luminous virtuosity.

It was in the UK that he formed an association with The Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra and developed a strong musical relationship with saxsophonist Raymond MacDonald.

This is their first album together, recorded live at the Concert Hall, University of Glasgow in February last year. Clearly the planets were in the right conjuctionin the celestial sphere and promted some inspired music making. Spence, who can be a powerful and expansive pianistis content to reveal a more thoughtful and considered side to his musical personality such as the opening of 'TransHemispheres', as both he and MacDonald cautiously circle each other before the saxophonist produces a passage that evokes several instruments in earnest dialogue. MacDonald is again compelling on 'Found on thre Way (b)' where he is largely performing solo, and on 'Northern Window (b)' where both pianist and saxsophonist move the album to a thoughtful climax.” - Stuart Nicholson, Jazzwise

Sound Lab: City Halls, Glasgow March 2012, Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra

"Over the next 12 weeks the sound lab series of recitals will see experimental performers from Siberia, Iceland and the US join home-grown musicians in the intimate setting of the City Hall's recital room.

 It's a bold endeavour featuring music created largely in the moment and drawing on various traditions, involving instruments from synthesisers to jaw harps and the human voice.

 This first instalment marked the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra's 10th anniversary, and focused on a series of small group "chamber" improvisations, duos, trios and a quartet, with a ten-piece edition of the orchestra convening for the finale. The results were a little mixed: some of the groupings were a little tentative but nonetheless contained moments of interest where the sounds created showed genuine invention and interaction.

The most successful were the improvisations that achieved a natural sense of continuity, either in the impromptu song-like structure of Robert Henderson's trumpet playing, in a trio with bassist Una McGlone and pianist Gerry Rossi; or in the duetting of harper Catriona McKay and Raymond MacDonald.

MacDonald's whistled melody created a plaintive beginning for the full ensemble's rugged but considered mix of double bass spurts, piano thrusts, trumpet, melodica and flute passages and acoustic guitar and cello bursts that gave each musician an input, and showed what the GIO can achieve in spontaneous performance". - Rob Adams, The Herald

“Constant Weave” George Burt (guitar) / Raymond MacDonald (saxs)

"Burt and MacDonald dabble in the type of improvisation that many “specialists” with a leaking nose will consider surpassed and not consequential enough as opposed to the hieratic gravity of a “performer” listening with firm concentration to buses and police alarms coming from the nearby boulevard, presumably interspersed with various types of toneless fart. But guess what, this stuff is good – very good – and so well recorded that the mere act of enjoying the unfinished frolicsomeness of some of these fragments is sufficient for this scribe.

 Specifically, Burt is the kind of player that alternates his interest in upper partials found just everywhere on the neck, electric rashness and classic preparations (alright, those bouncing objects between the strings are a commonplace by now, however in this case there’s a clearly perceivable honesty that saves the day). Clean-toned vibrato à la Frith and arrhythmic accompaniment of nonexistent themes complete the expressive gamut of this perspicacious artist.

 MacDonald is perhaps showing a bigger tendency to jazz-oriented phrasing, as heard – for instance – in the first half of “2nd Thoughts”. Yet when the time comes, he changes the approach abruptly and substantially, able to individuate the exact points in which bedlam and presence of mind fuse, allowing the music to reach levels of unexpected intensity enriched by beautifully resonant halos and deliberate melodic reflections (“A Panel Of Experts”). As Pink Floyd used to say, a nice pair." - Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes

Falkirk FMH CD168-i0706 | Glasgow Improvisers' Orchestra (with Barry Guy)

**** "This is the third in a series of albums from the GIO made with guest artists (the others were with Evan Parker and singer Maggie Nichols). If the first two were valuable documents of large ensemble improvisation, Falkirk with Barry Guy and Maya Homburger represents a coming of age for the orchestra. If the opening and anthemic improvisation were not inspiring enough, the long Barry Guy composition, 'Witch Gong Game II/10', that follows is quite astonishingly brilliant. It opens out with a sax-led section that has the kind of searing intensity rarely found in music such as this. As for singer Nicola MacDonald, her "speaking in tongues" vocal recalls the great Maggie Nichols at her most wonderfully barmy.

It's fabulous and worth the entry price on its own. But the fire power of this band is truly awesome. They grab Guy's ideas like an opportunity so longed-for, that no-one wants to waste this chance. At times haunting and beautiful - there's one section with trumpet, flute and drums and another sotto voce woodwind segment that are both quite lovely - but at others mighty and glorious, this is a completely successful record that deserves to sell by the cartload." - Duncan Heining, Jazzwise

“Delphinius & Lyra” (Clean Feed, 2007) Raymond MacDonald (alto/soprano saxs) Gunter Baby Sommer (drums/percussion)

"It is rare that free jazz drummer develops such a distinct style as German master Gunter “Baby” Sommer, one of the most noted free jazz players of the European scene during the 70’s and 80’s.

Although he didn’t play on as many seminal albums as Han Bennink, who established himself amongst jazz aficionados as the pioneering percussionist in Central Europe during the 60’s and 70’s, Sommer is known for his ability to create an infectious, quirky sense of rhythm through use of a lighter approach to the percussion, as opposed to the sonic aggression approach. For more proof, see 1988’s “Reserve” and 1982’s cult classic “Pica Pica,” both featuring Peter Brotzmann.

It is exactly this style that Sommer brings to the table in this duo with Scottish reed master Raymond MacDonald. MacDonald first began producing material in the mid-90’s, but has blossomed in the new millennium, most notably as the co-leader of an ensemble with George Burt. On this album, MacDonald thrives thanks to a master a furiously squeaky style which perfectly compliments Sommer’s earthy, and subtly catchy percussion work." - Mike Szajewski, WNUR

Live at CCA, Glasgow, Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra with George Lewis

"Improvised music and curling don’t immediately resonate as companion activities but the sweeping of a stone across ice by opposing brush-wielders was how George Lewis summed up how music might develop as musicians sought to introduce ideas in an environment such as Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra.

The Chicago-born trombonist, composer and scholar is the latest in an impressive line of collaborators that the orchestra has brought to Glasgow in its five-year history and the results were, arguably, the most stimulating so far.

Where previous projects have produced powerful and often intriguing music, Lewis brought a greater sense of organisation and composition to the bandstand without sacrificing the music’s intrinsic spontaneity. Arranged in sections – cello and basses stage left, computer generated sounds, voice and guitars stage right and so on – the orchestra responded to suggestions which were written rather than notated, working in units that combined to create compelling atmospheres and structural continuity.

Even in a piece through which each musician was left to find his or her own way, this structure and continuity obtained, as a simple motif was picked up and passed from saxophone to drums and onwards before the sound of a stylus crackling on vinyl signalled the end of the “record”.

There were times, as there generally are in these situations, when silences had to be confirmed as actual endings. But overall the results were genuinely satisfying and involving for listener as well as performer.

Touches of theatre – including Lewis creating some amazing sounds with just trombone mouthpiece and slide – and pre- and post-performance chats also created an air of informality that added considerably to the enjoyment." - Rob Adams, The Herald

Boohoo Fever (LEO CD LR 472 Rude Dwellings) George Burt / Raymond MacDonald Sextet, George Burt (guitar), Raymond MacDonald (alto/soprano saxs), Keith Tippett (piano), George Lyle (bass), Alyn Cosker (drums), Nicola MacDonald (vovals/ meolodica)

"Not many albums begin their journey towards completion by celebrating a town clock. Keith Tippett is the Sextet’s featured guest for this recording, having made his lengthy and winding way northwards to the Isle of Mull, where stands the town of Tobermory’s ticking time-piece. Booklet scribe Brian Morton will fill you in on the convoluted conceptual background to these pieces, but only after making a purchase of this disc. It’s good reading, but is certainly not needed to appreciate the music’s ever-shifting abstractions.

The opening “Rude Dwellings” is afire, and this flare-up will not diminish during the album’s entire progress. The band are vigorous and tensed, tightly contracted for maximum impact, feverishly burning to play. Tippett’s rolling runs wend their prepared-key way, barrelling through Alyn Cosker’s crashing drum strafes. George Lyle’s upright bass is so forcefully struck that it has the hardness of and electric axe. “Glen Eyric” goes for building suspense, as- droves of bruised tunes flee hither and thither, amidst a groaning and grinding suspension of tension.

There’s a shift of tone again, as “Ito’s Vanity” has Burt playing like Derek Bailey, fresh out of his dance band days, with melodica chills courtesy of Nicola MacDonald. The space is open, as Raymond MacDonald sends out flurries of burred lowness.

He remains at the forefront for “Mr. Dolphin’s Gig”, his jabbering issuances not pausing for breath. This sextet knows all about variety. They’re not averse to a premeditated tune, either. “The Forgotten Croft” is a crabbily melodic roll, and then a few numbers later Nicola MacDonald turns in a vocal float, lending further planned structure.

These are radically differing soundscapes, all delivered with great emotional intensity and a strong sense of the importance of the moment. Risks have been taken, and the Sextet plunge and rise between Hades and Heaven, grinning madly all the time." - Jazz Review

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"George Burt and Raymond MacDonald are free music archi­tects from Glasgow whose playing hovers between improvisation and composition. They regularly engage with outsiders: previous recordings have featured Future Pilot AKA and Lol Coxhill; MacDonald is also head of the Glasgow Irnprovisers Orchestra.

Boohoo Fever is the second album sourced from the sextet’s Tobermory Arts Centre commission to celebrate the town’s clock, built from funds bequeathed by traveller Isabella Bird as a tribute to her sister Henrietta: the first, A Day for a Reason, appeared in 2005 on Tob Records.

Burt and MacDonald key into a peculiarly British approach to free music that slips post-idiomatic playing against mischievous, borderline-arch genre-parody songs and gor­geously teary melodies, and in that respect they’ve found an agile collaborator in Keith Tippett. When he’s unhooked from struc­ture his playing is gorgeous, but some of the most revelatory moments come via his piano preparations, which turn the instrument into a fifty-handed steel drum orchestra on the sashaying “The Forgotten Croft”. A duo tussle between MacDonald on saxo­phone and George Lyle on double bass entitled “Mr Dolphin’s Gig” is suitably tetchy and busy: pieces like this work as potent contrasts to sad-eyed ballads like “The Gallery”, where Nicola MacDonald’s voice is devastatingly melancholy.” - Jon Dale, Signal to Noise Winter 2007

“Flapjack” (FMR, 2006) Raymond MacDonald (alto/soprano sax) Neil Davidson (guitar)
“Listen Big” (Isis, 2006) Rich in Knuckles is Raymond MacDonald, Graeme Wilson, John Burges, Christoph Reiserer (saxes)

"Something extraordinary is happening in Glasgow these days. If someone were to tell me Scotland’s second city was a new hotbed for experimental jazz/improv I would never believe it, unless of course I had heard the latest from Glasgow saxophonist Raymond MacDonald. His style and maturity as an improviser is exceptional and these two releases see him thriving in the medium of free improvisation.

“Flapjack” is an excellent disc of sax-guitar free improv interchanges between two truly sympathetic musicians. MacDonald and Davidson’s approach to the music is so complimentary that it sounds as if they had been playing together for years. But even as enjoyable as this disc is, “Listen Big” is what really grabbed my attention. This is the first recording by Rich in Knuckles, a saxophone quartet that first met as part of the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra project of late 2004 with Reiserer as the only one of the four not originally from Scotland. Their sound is utterly unique with an intoxicating combination of through composed music and free improvisation. It’s one of the most compelling and arresting listens I have had in some time and does much to further establish MacDonald as a leading voice in modern improvisational music.

When one combines these two releases with the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra album mentioned earlier, the case for Glasgow couldn’t be stronger." - Andrew Lamb, WNUR

Live at Henry’s Jazz Cellar, Burt MacDonald Quintet with Harry Beckett

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"Last night was the 69-year-old trumpeter Harry Beckett's first collaboration with the Burt MacDonald Quintet – led by two of Scotland’s most distinctive jazz performers, guitarist George Burt and saxophonist Raymond MacDonald. Completing the line up for this gig were vocalist Nicola MacDonald, bassist Bill Wells and drummer Tom Bancroft.

Throughout this gig whenever Beckett pitched in a trumpet solo, you could see Burt and MacDonald marvelling over the way his improvisations provided perfect foil for their songs. Take Me Back to Appsala, written by Burt, set the bar high from the onset – kicking off 90 minutes of free-form jazz ranging from the eloquent to the explosive. At the end of the opener, Nicola MacDonald was introduced, providing velvety-voiced vocals over some wayward and arresting sax.

The next composition, Behind The Big Clock, featuring beautiful brush playing from Bancroft on drums, had more than a touch of Tom Waits about it.

Elsewhere, Down By The Sally Gardens, a song Burt composed using the words of the poet William Butler Yeats, was an example of free-flowing improvised jazz at its best. After another fierce saxophone lead-in, it melted into one of most melodic songs of the set, before improvised madness took over again.

After a short break came the evening’s standout track. On Little Train by Heitor Villa-Lobos, Beckett provided more truly great improvisation, and the drum solo was outstanding.

Another highlight came during a song called Smooth Day. In its infancy, while Nicola MacDonald was lending her creamy vocals, you’d have been forgiven for thinking this was just some straight-ahead jazz standard. Half-way in, however, Beckett and Raymond MacDonald changed the direction of the piece entirely – their furious free playing providing many exciting twists and turns.

Predictably, after one of the best jazz gigs Edinburgh has seen in some time, the musicians left the stage to applause that was long and loud." - Gary Flockhart, Edinburgh Evening News

Travellin’ Light, Raymond MacDonald Answers 20 Questions About Life on the Road (link)