St Andrew's in the Square

St Andrew's Parish Church,as it was called, took two decades to complete;1736 to1756.
The architect was Allan Dreghorn,whose ideas for the building were modelled on
St Martin's-in-the-Fields in London.
St Andrew's in the Square is regarded as one of the finest classical church buildings in
Britain. Sadly, during the latter part of the 20th century, the congregation was small, and maintenance was too big a financial burden. The Church of Scotland took the decision to
combine the parish with the neighbouring St Luke's, leaving the glorious but dark and damp
St Andrew's empty and, apparently, useless. However, because of its rather special atmosphere and its rare architectural qualities, the building was saved.
It was purchased by Glasgow Building Preservation Trust(GBPT) whose board has supervised
the restoration and conversion of St Andrew's in the Square. The scheme involved creating a
performance venue,a cafe-bar, and ancillary accommodation.
It was vital that Allan Dreghorn's vision should remain integral to the building, and the intention was to restore fully the Georgian appearance. Conservation architect Nicholas Groves-Raines ensured that the interior work included reinstatement of the original colour scheme and the gilding work on the ceiling. This was painstaking and expensive but GBPT believed that these
aspects of the building's former grandeur and beauty should be there for all to see.
The restoration was completed by December 1999, and the first eight years have been full of excitement and pleasure as Glaswegians and visitors from all over the world dicover this gem
of a place, The venue is highly valued as Glasgow's Centre for Scottish Culture, and is now firmly established and very well loved.(Posted by Jenny Laurie)

Fiddling in 2008

Happy New Year and good fiddling to all SAINTSFiddlers'

members and friends.This year we hope to post the music for a new tune

every month.If you liked the video of 'Christmas Eve',

more clips can be added.The video took so long to load

that it might be better to simply publish the link so that the video can be watched

off the site. Any suggestions and tech advice would be appreciated!

As you know, our first meeting of the year is on 14 January and Celtic Connections

starts on Wednesday 16. There are as usual quite a few concerts of particular

interest to fiddlers, but one of the most interesting this year is the concert with

the swedish group 'Vasen' from whom we learned 'Waltz for Josephine'.

That takes place on Saturday 26 January in the Royal Concert Hall, Strathclyde Suite.

Bruce Molsky appears on Monday 28 in St Andrew's in the Square

with a very interesting group called 'Waltz with me.' The group includes a Hardanger

fiddler and a cellist.Sounds good!

Hope to see everyone on the 14th..........

Christmas Eve, or Tommy Coen's reel

This is my attempt at the reel. It's quite a difficult tune
but a great one for a session.

Tune of the Month

Here is a tune which I have always liked to play and not
just at Christmas time.It's a reel called 'Christmas Eve',
or sometimes 'Tommy Coen's' after the fiddler from County
Galway who composed it in the 1950's.It may have been named
because it was first broadcast on radio on Christmas Eve 1955.
Whatever, it's a great tune, which deserves to be played more
often.The link to the music is -http://www.thesession.org/tunes/display/440