Cumnock Scotland

Home of James MacMillan’s Tryst festival, the picturesque Ayrshire town punches well above its musical weight, as Clare Stevens discovers

-  Clare Stevens

If you were to do a vox pop on the streets of Glasgow or Edinburgh asking for recommendations of musical destinations, the small town of Cumnock in the south west of Scotland would probably not be top of the resulting list – but it should be. It was the childhood home of composer Sir James MacMillan, and since 2014 it has been the home of The Cumnock Tryst, the festival he founded with the aim of giving something back to the community where he grew up.

‘Tryst’ is an old Scots word for a meeting place, or romantic rendezvous; Cumnock itself is a geographical meeting place between the Glaisnock River and Lugar Water, and its Gaelic name, comunn achadh, means ‘place of the confluence’. As long ago as the 1980s, MacMillan composed a musical setting to ‘The Tryst’, a love poem by William Soutar, and the name was also a natural fit for his festival, whose strapline is ‘A Meeting Place for Music’. Over four days in early October he welcomes internationally renowned musicians to perform in a variety of venues in the town and surrounding villages.