Comprising Helen Scarborough (oboe), Adam Mackenzie (bassoon) and Tom Lessels (clarinet), the ensemble's Bute concert, in the assembly hall of the Rothesay joint campus, is the first in a six-date Scottish tour.
The ensemble is one of six young gr
oups which attracted sponsorship at the 2008 auditions of the Tunnell Trust for Young Musicians, which pays the fees of a small number of outstanding young groups each year, enabling them to play at music clubs and societies all over Scotland, with a particular emphasis on concerts in small and remote locations.
Adam Mackenzie, the group's founder and a former pupil of Tain Royal Academy, graduated from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 2004 with first class honours, and has also won a host of prizes and scholarships and taken part in a live broadcast on BBC Radio 3.
Now a highly regarded freelance, he plays regularly as principal bassoon with orchestras such as the Philharmonia, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the London Mozart Players and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and has recently been appointed director of education for English Sinfonia.
Originally from Aberdeen, Tom Lessels has been principal clarinettist with the European Union Youth Orchestra since 2004, and has worked side-by-side with several major contemporary composers, including Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Thomas Ades, Jonathan Harvey, Colin Matthews and Rodion Shchedrin, to name a few.
He, too, has won many prizes and awards including the Royal Academy of Music Clarinet Prize, the Harold Craxton Chamber Music Prize, the Leverhulme Award, a Countess of Munster Musical Trust award, a Martin/Philharmonia Musical Scholarship, Sir James Caird's Travelling Scholarships Trust award and the Scottish International Educational Trust.
Friday's concert, at the joint campus assembly hall, begins at 7.30pm; admission is £7 for adults and free for students.
