OVER/ AT Presents Ailie Ormston: The Glad Cafe

In September of this year, OVER / AT CIC will embark on its most ambitious tour to date with artist-composer Ailie Ormston. A new composition will be performed live across unusual venues in the North West Highlands and Islands of Scotland.

On the 8th of September, Ailie Ormston will be performing at our beloved Glad Cafe in Glasgow. Ormston presents a brand new work written for a self-contained arrangement of electric guitar and tape(s). Ormston’s work is primarily constructed through improvisation and assemblage. Expect motivic development, timbral abstraction, hifi and lofi sounds, repetition, microtonality, and song. This all serves the goal of making music specifically for unusual spaces. Ormston will have support from your local Uzganc choir. Uzganc is a Glasgow based choir started by Martin Steuck (aka Wormhook). It is made up of musicians and non-musicians alike, with a loose and changeable membership.

This event concludes a tour of North West Scotland and was made possible by OVER / AT CIC with financial support from Creative Scotland and the Hinrichsen Foundation. We'll be opening doors at 19:00 with an aim to get started by 19:30 and finish up around 22:30 so you still have time to get home or meet at the pub after. As this concludes the tour, let's have a real knees-up!

These events will be intimate opportunities to hear unusual music being played in unusual places – in front of the old lighthouse tower in Gairloch, in a barn on Mull, a church hall in Lochalsh, and finishing at an old haunt, The Glad Cafe in Glasgow. We hope to bring about new connections between performers, audiences, and places.

Tour Dates

4th September 2025 — Gairloch Museum (supported by RÓ)

5th September 2025 — Kirkton Hall, Lochalsh

7th September 2025 — KNOCKvologan Studies, Isle of Mull

8th September 2025 — The Glad Cafe, Glasgow (supported by UZGANC Choir)

Photo by Jordan Young

Commissioned Work

During the tour, Ormston will perform a new work specially commissioned for this setting.

Ormston will perform new music written for a self-contained arrangement of electric guitar and tape(s). Within limited parameters, Ormston has devised routes to explore the scope of minimal setup by playing with small object interventions, additional speakers, an evolving use of fore/back/middle ground within the instrumental voices, as well as developing motivic and static melodic lines of music. This all serves the goal of making music specifically for unusual spaces.

Photo by Jordan Young

About OVER / AT

OVER / AT CIC is a trans, non-binary, and otherwise gender-diverse music-making world. Since then, we have commissioned new work, and hosted performances and workshops both online and around Scotland.

Photo by Bradford Bailey

About Ailie Ormston

Ailie Ormston is a composer and musician from Aberdeen who makes electronic music as well as music for ensembles that experiments with timbral abstraction, temporality, assemblage and improvisation. They now reside in Glasgow.

Over the years, Ormston has received commissions from Counterflows (2018, 2021, 2024), Tectonics (2022), Cryptic (2022) and the Barbican (2024). They have worked collaboratively with Tim Fraser on It Changes (bison; 2022) and Finlay Clark on Sunflowers Face The Sun (33-33; 2020), as well as two solo releases; The Sedate/Tony Soprano Fashion Inspo. (50% PURE; 2018) and most recently Frames that lean, pictures that roam (Akashic Records; 2025). Ormston’s work has been featured and reviewed in publications such as The Wire and Loud & Quiet with broadcasts across online and digital radios.

They are currently writing a string quartet for New York’s JACK Quartet as part of their JACK Studio programme to be premiered in Spring 2026.

About Uzganc

Uzganc is a Glasgow based choir started by Martin Steuck (aka Wormhook). It is a testing ground for voices, made up of a changeable group musicians and non musicians. They push frank lyrics through a sausage machine of multiple voices, harmonies and structural shifts to create something relatable and otherworldly.

Poster adapted from photography by Olly Geary

Funding

This tour has been made possible by funding from Creative Scotland's National Lottery Open Fund for Organisations and support from the Hinrichsen Foundation.