Welcome to the Kelso Music Society's 2023-2024 season. Once again we have an exciting and varied programme for you which contains the usual core elements - as well as a few concerts which might be a surprise for some of our audience!
This season there is more of a slant towards young emerging artists and (in a number of cases) artists who are either Scottish or have studied here. Three of our performers started out at St Mary's Music School in Edinburgh and three studied or are studying at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. We have a concert which crosses the lines between classical, folk and jazz idioms in the wonderful Seonaid Aitken Ensemble and, in perhaps another step out of tradition, a concert which features a young and extremely talented accordionist.
Continuing Peter Podmore's fondness for artists that have won international competitions we have the young Berlin based Leonkoro Quartet, who keep adding laurels as the months go by. We have the return of the pianist Richard Uttley who also gave a delightful concert to schools on his last visit. His duo partner is another brilliant young musician – the horn player Ben Goldscheider. In the second half of the season we welcome back Gina McCormack who will, with friends, give a concert of well-loved mainstream repertoire.
Above this text you can see a photograph of the concert given last October by Connaught Brass for local primary schools. After this, the group moved to Kelso High School to work with a group of senior pupils. Another school's concert given in February by the Gould Piano Trio and Robert Plane. For this we were fortunate to gain sponsorship from Fallago Trust which enabled us to fund transport that expanded the reach to some of the more rural primary schools, rather than simply the local Kelso schools that can walk to the church. We are very grateful to all our sponsors (listed later in the brochure) for the finances that allow such outreach work to happen and also to Lis Dooner and Stephen Tees who work on this aspect of Kelso Music Society. A number of these schools posted photographs of the morning on their local activities page of Kelso Life.
Last year I started my introduction with the statement that we ended the previous season with a deficit of over £3000 – but with the positive announcement of an impressive season to come. Gradually our numbers have increased and I am pleased to say that we ended the 2022-2023 season with a very small surplus. We very much hope and expect this pattern to continue.
James Young (President)
