Five minutes with… Sheila Colvin

Sheila Colvin—widow of the late John Calder – is a long-time supporter and former Trustee of Scottish Ensemble, as well as former General Manager of the Aldeburgh Foundation (now Britten Pears Arts) and Associate Director of the Edinburgh International Festival. Here she talks about her lifelong passion for music and the work of the Calder Commissioning Fund, which plays a vital role in helping to support and inspire bold, original new works. 

Scottish Ensemble (or Scottish Baroque Ensemble as it was then) was the brainchild of John Calder and the musician Leonard Friedman. John was planning an arts festival in his country house in Kinross and the Scottish Baroque Ensemble was put together to perform Handel’s Parthenope for the first festival. He was a passionate music lover, particularly opera. He travelled the world to find an opera he’d never heard before, his travels were legendary.   

I thought it would be an interesting idea to have something in perpetuity that would remember John’s name and involvement in Scottish Ensemble. The Calder Commissioning Fund is specifically set up to enable Scottish Ensemble to develop new work. Music won’t survive without new work. You can only exist on the Four Seasons for so long! 

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At this year’s Concerts by Candlelight, you can see the third composition supported by this fund, the UK premiere of Moments of Memory VI by Valentin Silvestrov.  

Times are tough in almost every aspect of people’s lives, and not just people in the arts. Humanity feels it’s going through a really challenging phase. And you sometimes think, “come on, you know, the Victorians had it tough”, but they weren’t so aware then of what was going on on the other side of the globe. I can’t imagine having a superpower. 

I was certainly aware of music at home. My father had a good bass voice and my mother played the violin. And I remember an early record my father brought home of the Russian bass, Alexander Kipnis. I was taught piano by a local lady called Madame Carr, who marked my music with purple ink! 

It wasn’t a straight Scottish Ensemble performance. It was a collaboration at Summerhall in Edinburgh in 2019 with members of SE and Keyvan Chemirani and Bijan Chemirani (Persian percussion) and Sokratis Sinopoulos (lyra fiddle). 

The relationship between the two groups of musicians was absolutely wonderful. The respect each had for listening to what the other was doing. It was just a beautiful event, and it grabbed the audience. My goodness! People were so enthusiastic about it. Just a fabulous concert.  

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Read more about Continental Drift and French-Iranian multi-instrumentalist Keyvan Chemirani in our interview. 

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I’ve been to so many great concerts by Scottish Ensmeble. David Fennessy’s RAIN I and 2 the first commission from the Calder Commissioning Fund in 2023 was stunning. 

Go and listen to them, go to a performance. There is nothing so potent as being at a performance. You’re actually part of the making of the music when you’re at a performance. You can see what’s going into it rather than just absorbing it through your ears.  

So, the first thing, if you possibly can, is go to a performance and if you feel that it was a rewarding, challenging and above all enjoyable thing to do, then perhaps get your chequebook out? 

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A huge thank you to Sheila and all of our supporters who enable our pioneering collaborations and exceptional performances. If you would like to help Scottish Ensemble present life-changing performances across Scotland, share Music for Wellbeing experiences, and develop Young Artists, you can support us too.  

Find out more, and share a donation of any amount, here.