Strathearn Music Society Review – Sequoia Duo
Wed 25th March 2026
Looking back on the past few seasons of Concerts in Crieff, it’s striking how many instrumental duos have appeared, and how much variety can be represented by just three letters (and two people). The permutations are endless (only recently we’ve had two guitars, guitar and flute, guitar and violin, violin and piano, etc, etc) but the simple combination of violin and cello (which featured in this end-of-season performance by Sequoia) is always more versatile than one might expect. Exactly four years ago, in March 2022, Strathearn Music Society presented the Gaia Duo whose playing was reviewed thus: “if the idea of a string duo seems any less substantial and rewarding than a full quartet, then think again. Less can very definitely be more”…..
The resemblances between Gaia and Sequoia are extremely close, both ensembles coming over as innovative and imaginative with a wide-ranging view of music which effortlessly involves their listeners’ attention. The latter is a well-established (2010) and relaxed partnership who have clearly developed a confidence and fluency in their approach, which places music as a living and vital element amongst many other aspects of art and human experience. This is refreshing in the concert context where sometimes it can seem isolated from its surroundings and an abstract apart from the rest of the world.
Violinist Alice Rickards and cellist Sonia Cromarty conceived “Water Music – Source to Sea” as a broad and thought-provoking project to inspire people of all ages to consider one of our most precious resources through not just live performance (as here in Crieff) but also through videos, a recorded album, online resources of creative activities and a series of school music workshops on environmental themes. They have rightly attracted substantial support from arts organisations and other bodies to develop their inspiration and bring it to fruition. The piece imagines and illuminates the journey of a raindrop as it crosses Scotland to join the sea, and it incorporates a huge range of music, including a few bars of charming pizzicato written by an eight-year-old Sibelius, two-part Inventions by Bach, tunes by Shetland fiddler Chris Stout, and a plethora of contemporary compositions by Lisa Robertson, Stuart MacRae, David Fennessy and others. These are interspersed with field recordings and backed up by eye-catching video clips; there’s even a captivating interlude where the players are joined by a recording of the song of a humpback whale to form an unlikely but unexpectedly beautiful and haunting trio!
The problem here is that the more words one writes in order to describe it, the less convincing it sounds on paper, and this is therefore a good point to wrap up. However, the entirety of Sequoia’s performance in the flesh does more than justice to the whole thing. It was quite simply a beautiful and transporting experience, meticulously crafted and executed by thoughtful and accomplished professionals.
