Upbeat: Sink or swim

SHETLAND is claiming the most northerly event in the European Arts Festival when the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra visits Lerwick on 17 September to premiere an hour-long cantata by David Ward. Called Beyond the Far Haaf, it expands on the tale of a 19th-century fishing disaster: the text by Robert Alan Jamieson has won the Shetland Literary Prize. Ward, who was born in 1941, studied composition with Alexander Goehr and has lived since 1986 on the island of Yell, Shetland. Singers are the soprano Margaret Cable and the baritone Graham Titus; Jerzy Maksymiuk conducts.