AMPLIFI Dec 2022

The Queen's Hall presents Season 2 of our gig series showcasing the sounds of modern Scotland.

With artists hand-picked by guest curators Arusa Qureshi and Halina Rifai of We Are Here Scotland - staged in our intimate performance space - AMPLIFI presents an exciting opportunity to see new and rising artists in a setting designed to amplify their voices and put them centre stage.

PERFORMERS:

Queen of Harps A Scotland-based artist who merges poetic flows, spoken word and bars, blended with her harp compositions. She claims the label ‘Hip-Hop-Harp’. Her music divulges her past transparently through heartfelt lyrics. Classically trained from a young age, the Queen of Harps was born and raised on the Scottish music scene. Despite her main inspiration being early Hip-Hop, she works with producers from various genres, performing in venues across the UK. This promising young musician is pushing boundaries, with her debut single ‘Situation’ released February 2022, which was played twice on BBC introducing earlier this year.

Stephanie Lamprea Colombian-American soprano Stephanie Lamprea is an architect of new sounds and expressions as a performer, recitalist, curator, and improviser, specialising in contemporary classical repertoire. Trained as an operatic coloratura, she uses her voice as a mechanism of avant-garde performance art, creating “maniacal shifts of vocal production and character… like an icepick through the skull” (Jason Eckardt). Stephanie has received awards from the Concert Artist Guild, St. Botolph Club Foundation, the John Cage Orgel Stiftung, the Puffin Foundation, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.

Sagnick Mukherjee A musician from Kolkata, currently based in Glasgow, Sagnick recently graduated from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland where he studied viola and violin. He has featured in performances and recordings with various ensembles in India and the UK in a range of traditional and unconventional settings. He enjoys exploring music of different places, styles, and times – from the intricacies of historically informed performance practice to creating new music as a composer, collaborator, and improviser.

CURATORS:

Arusa Qureshi is an award-winning writer, editor and speaker with a passion for music, diversity and accessibility within arts and culture. Her book about women in UK hip hop, ‘Flip the Script’, is out now via 404 Ink. She has bylines in The Guardian, NME, Clash, Time Out, The Forty-Five and The Scotsman.

Halina Rifai is a podcast producer, music writer, PR & digital marketer. She founded music site Podcart in 2009 and went on to become a podcast producer, working with the likes of BBC Scotland, The Big Light, Mental Health Foundation, Fringe of Colour and more. She works in PR & Marketing with Scottish Women Inventing Music and Dardishi: a creative platform for Arab & North African women and gender monitories.

Supported by Creative Scotland and the City of Edinburgh Council.

Shortlisted for the Creative Edinburgh 'Inclusion' Award.