IVOR Novello Award-winning composer Martin Green is making his playwriting debut with a show marking 40 years since the miners’ strikes.
Best known as the virtuoso accordionist in the folk trio Lau, Green has spent the past two years on an odyssey deep into the world of brass bands, culminating in the production of KELI.
It will feature brass band music from Green’s acclaimed album Split The Air. Through collaboration with Whitburn Band, and other local brass bands around Scotland, the new show aims to sustain ongoing relationships with Scottish brass bands and the communities they represent.
The play tells the story of a fiery, sharp-witted teenager in a former mining town. Coal means little to Keli, but the mines left music in the blood of the town.
Touring Scotland in 2025, the show will reach audiences across the country who belong to communities that were hugely affected by the miners’ strike of 1984-85.
READ MORE: LibDems to vote down Budget if it contains 'even a penny' of independence spending
Green’s journey into the world of mining town brass bands began by chance near his home in Midlothian. Following a poster advertising Brass In The Park, he discovered a self-sustaining world of music-making that – like the folk tradition – had retained its social function and was part of the warp and weft of the communities that performed it.
His fictional play has evolved from the critically acclaimed BBC Radio 4 series Banding: Love, Spit And Valve Oil which explored the phenomenon of modern brass bands and featured interviews with their members. These interviews have inspired aspects of the characters in the play.
As a member of Lau, Green has won BBC Radio 2’s Folk Award for Best Group an unprecedented four times. In 2014, he received a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Artists in recognition of his talent as a composer. In 2019, he won the Ivor Novello Award for his large-scale installation Aeons which was part of the Great Exhibition of the North.
Most recently, he has gone on to create critically acclaimed work for BBC Radio 4 exploring different communities all over the UK and their relationship with music. These have reached millions of listeners and have been highly commended by the Association of International Broadcasters.
Green is also the artistic director of Lepus Arts, which is co-producing KELI with the National Theatre of Scotland.
“To be making KELI with National Theatre of Scotland and director Bryony Shanahan 40 years on from the miners’ strike feels absolutely right,” he said.
Why are you making commenting on The National only available to subscribers?
We know there are thousands of National readers who want to debate, argue and go back and forth in the comments section of our stories. We’ve got the most informed readers in Scotland, asking each other the big questions about the future of our country.
Unfortunately, though, these important debates are being spoiled by a vocal minority of trolls who aren’t really interested in the issues, try to derail the conversations, register under fake names, and post vile abuse.
So that’s why we’ve decided to make the ability to comment only available to our paying subscribers. That way, all the trolls who post abuse on our website will have to pay if they want to join the debate – and risk a permanent ban from the account that they subscribe with.
The conversation will go back to what it should be about – people who care passionately about the issues, but disagree constructively on what we should do about them. Let’s get that debate started!
Callum Baird, Editor of The National
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here