Hi there, we are Lumas Winds, and we’re very excited to be embarking on our very first tour of Scotland! We thought we’d give you a quick wrap up of our time so far:

We began our visit to Scotland on the 15th of February, travelling up together by train after a concert for the Ilkley Concert Club – we then spent 5 days rehearsing intensely for the tour, alongside preparing for other engagements like our residency at Aldeburgh as Britten Pears Young Artists in mid-March. Highlights of this residency included a large amount of game playing, from card games to FIFA and LEGO Harry Potter! And a lovely visit to Balmoral care home in Giffnock where we performed a mix of jazzy pieces and easy-listeners to the residents.

After our residency at Chris’ house, we packed up the Honda Jazz, departed from our base in Glasgow and arrived at our first tour destination – Dundee. We began the day running a workshop with wind players from schools across Dundee, where we discussed all things from technique to finding motivation to practice and specific challenges that we’ve encountered as an ensemble. We also focused on a piece that the students had been preparing – Holst’s second Suite in F Major – paying attention to dynamic variation, blending and phrasing, alongside instructing and practicing how to lead the beginning of the piece.

After a delicious lunch at The Bach, a local cafe, we arrived at the Steeple Church, a gorgeous newly-renovated church with a lovely warm acoustic for a brief rehearsal before the evening concert.  We went for our pre-concert meal at The Gidi Grill, an Afro-Caribbean restaurant, with the concert secretary of the music society, David Robb – it was great to put a face to the name of someone we’d been in contact for almost a year and a half leading up to the concert!

The concert was lovely – the audience so warm and welcoming to us, and we enjoyed the performance immensely. After hanging around for a chat with some of the audience members, we returned to the home of our lovely hosts across the Firth of Tay in Wormit for a well deserved glass of wine, and tomorrow we set off for a 2hr drive to Moffat for our second concert!