Date Published: 18th July 2022

In ‘Songs of Edinburgh’, the composer Tom Cunningham set to music nine poems by the best-selling author, Alexander McCall Smith. The poems are based on photographs in Edinburgh: A Work of Beauty – a book of vintage photographs and other pictures of the Scottish capital from the collection of Historic Environment Scotland. The songs are beautifully performed by Brian Bannatyne-Scott (Bass) and Beth Taylor (Mezzo), accompanied on the piano by Micheał Gajzler. This live recording was made at St Michael’s Church in Edinburgh in August 2021 and is – quite simply – a treat for the ears.

‘Songs of Edinburgh’ is available now from the Birnam Music Shop. Click here for more information.

‘Find a perfect spot to sit and enjoy this rich treasure’

James Collins, Edinburgh Reporter – commenting on the book publication Edinburgh: A Work of Beauty.

I love this city, and always shall. I write about it. I dream about it. I walk its streets and see something new each day—traces of faded lettering on the stone, still legible, but just; some facade that I have walked past before and either not noticed or not looked at closely enough; an unregarded doorway with the names, in brass, of those who lived there sixty years ago, the bell-pulls sometimes still in place, as if one might summon long-departed residents from their slumbers; a slice of sky that suddenly reveals itself through an archway; some pokey café or bar out of which wafts a hint of coffee beans or beer; an odd section of railings standing like a line of spears, or a small ironwork balcony dignified, perhaps, by fleurs-de-lys. Every day this city can reveal something old that is for me, in a sense, something new.

From Alexander McCall Smith’s introduction to Edinburgh: A Work of Beauty